Bernadette Peters could break a Tonys record with a nomination for ‘Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends’
Bernadette Peters has long been heralded as one of legendary composer Stephen Sondheim’s greatest interpreters. The actress originated roles in Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods and starred in revivals of Gypsy, A Little Night Music, and Follies. Now, three years after Sondheim’s passing, Peters has returned to Broadway to pay tribute to her long-time collaborator and friend in the revue Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends. If she receives recognition from the Tony Awards for her efforts, she could make history in the Best Featured Actress in a Musical category.
Peters earned her first Tony nomination in 1972 in Featured Actress for On the Town, which was her sixth Broadway production. She has received six additional nominations for Mack & Mabel, Sunday in the Park with George, Song and Dance, The Goodbye Girl, Annie Get Your Gun, and Gypsy – winning for Song and Dance and Annie Get Your Gun and receiving the honorary Isabelle Stevenson Award – but all those nominations were in the Best Actress category. A nomination for Old Friends this year in Featured Actress would set the Tonys record for the longest time span between nominations in category history at 53 years.
This record would best by just one year the current record holder, Barbara Cook, who earned two nominations in Featured Actress in 1958 and 2010, a gap of 52 years. Cook’s first nomination recognized her work in The Music Man, for which she won, and her second was ironically for a Sondheim revue called Sondheim on Sondheim.
Other performers who have had lengthy gaps in between nominations in this category include Broadway legends Chita Rivera at 42 years (Bye Bye Birdie in 1961; Nine in 2003), Bebe Neuwirth at 38 years (Sweet Charity in 1986, Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club in 2024), Patti LuPone at 35 years (The Robber Bridegroom in 1976, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown in 2011), Mary Beth Peil at 32 years (The King and I in 1985, Anastasia in 2017), and Judy Kuhn at 28 years (Les Misérables in 1987, Fun Home in 2015), though none hold a candle to either Cook’s record or Peters’ potential record-breaking number.
SEE Tonys: 'Old Friends' would be the first Sondheim show nominated for Best Musical in 31 years
Before Peters beats Cook’s record, she will first have to be considered eligible in the Featured Actress category by the Tony administration committee. Peters and Lea Salonga are billed above the title in the opening night Playbill for Old Friends, meaning they would by default be considered the two leads of the production. While the Tony administration often follows billing when determining in which category performers will compete, they also consider petitions and make their own decisions as to where performers fit best, especially with actors from revues. For example, Barbara Cook had above-the-title billing for Sondheim on Sondheim alongside Vanessa Williams and Tom Wopat, but the committee ruled that all three would be eligible in the featured categories; Cook went on to earn the nomination.
Peters currently ranks third in Gold Derby’s Tony odds for Featured Actress in a Musical. Seven of our nine editors and 10 of our 12 experts predict her for the nomination, too.
Her strong position echoes the generally positive reviews of the production. Maureen Lee Lenker, who gave the show an A grade in Entertainment Weekly, wrote, “Peters reminds audiences that Sondheim’s gift was not merely the unforgettable music, but the veritable feast he offered actors within the narrative arcs of his songs. Peters has a distinctive, haunting voice” and brings an “ache and palpable yearning of love and heartbreak” to her renditions of his songs, which “become transcendent, soul-shattering meditations on life and loss.” Adam Feldman from Time Out New York, who gave the show three-of-five stars, wrote, “Perhaps fittingly, the best reason to see Old Friends is the oldest thing in it: Bernadette Peters… She knows things now, many valuable things, and she brings them to Sondheim’s work like the best of friends: the ones who can tell you the truth.”
If Peters receives the nomination, it would indeed serve as a fitting capstone to her decades-long collaboration with Sondheim. For musical theater fans, seeing her perform songs she originated some four decades ago, including “Children Will Listen” from Into the Woods and “Sunday” from Sunday in the Park With George, feels like a religious experience. Her “Send in the Clowns,” which she performed as a replacement in the revival of A Little Night Musical in 2010, is nuanced and utterly resplendent, and her “Losing My Mind” from Follies, which she did in the 2011 Broadway revival, is ever-so-slightly different but no less heart-rending; both renditions elicited many tears and sniffles at the performance I attended.
But Peters does more than simply retread her past roles, many of which were either not nominated or not eligible for Tonys. Yes, she does Into the Woods, but she now plays Little Red Riding Hood to hilarious effect. Yes, she does Gypsy, but not Mama Rose, instead playing an utterly exhausted Miss Mazeppa, the stripper who bumps it with a trumpet. She pokes fun at the so-called “Bernadette Peters” take on “Broadway Baby,” a number which evolves into a sing-off amongst the many women of the ensemble. Later, she delivers her heartbreaking concert staple “Not A Day Goes By” to newly devastating effect as a tribute to Sondheim, accompanied by a black-and-white montage of photos of the late composer, including one or two with herself in them. "Old friends," indeed.
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