SAN FRANCISCO — If you’re disposed to whistle a happy show tune, be at Davies Hall on Saturday for an evening with tw
o-time Tony winner and Broadway, film and television star Bernadette Peters and the San Francisco Symphony.
Having recently returned to Los Angeles from a concert tour in Australia — which will be released on DVD — Peters is homesick.
“I can’t wait to see Stella,” she says. “She’s the star of my next book!” Stella, a pit bull adopted from a shelter, shares Peters’ New York home with her redheaded mama and Kramer, a terrier mix of equally uncertain provenance.
With this much canine company, it should be no surprise that Peters is the very active spokeswoman, along with animal lover Mary Tyler Moore, of Broadway Barks, a star-studded annual theater alley adopt-a-thon for Gotham’s homeless critters, held July 11.
“This year we’ve got Angela Lansbury and Michael Urie [Peters’ co-star] from ‘Ugly Betty’ is coming!”
Last year, Peters’ dog Kramer was the hero of her first literary effort, a charming children’s best-seller, also called “Broadway Barks.” The book’s companion CD included an original song by this premier interpreter of Sondheim.
Peters is modest about it. “Lyric writing is an art. I just sort of channeled that.”
“I’ve already written it,” Peters says when asked if Stella’s book will be similarly enhanced. “I’m starting to write more.”
“I was driving in the car the other day and all of a sudden these lyrics came to me and I’m like, ‘How do I save this so I can remember it?’” she says. “So I’m, you know, writing them down on a shopping bag during the red lights! So crazy! Then I remembered a friend of mine had given me a little tape recorder, so now I carry that with me. It’s safer for everybody that way!”
IF YOU GOBernadette Peters
Presented by San Francisco Symphony
Where: Davies Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco
When: 8 p.m. Saturday
Tickets: $30 to $90
Contact: (415) 864-6000, www.sfsymphony.org
