These Theater Singers Generate Bright Lights of Broadway’s Past

While the Tony Awards were lighting up Broadway on Sunday night, a goodly number of Los Angeles’ musical theater fans experienced a more modest but no less entertaining taste of the Great White Way. “Broadway at the Ford,” at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, featured the singing and dancing of veterans Carole Cook, Valarie Pettiford and Sean McDermott, and rising star Tami Tappan Damiano.

Like the Tony-winning “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” this was a program that tended to celebrate the Broadway past rather than anticipate its future. But there’s nothing wrong with that, given the enormous treasure trove of material from which to choose. The production efficiently moved the singers on and off stage, mixing solo spots for each artist with occasional duos--notably Damiano and McDermott’s tender reading of “The Last Night of the World” from “Miss Saigon.”

Cook relied on her diva presence, a bawdy sense of humor and vocal skill to invest familiar items such as “Strike Up the Band” and “Before the Parade Passes By” with the spirit and the tenderness of Broadway.

McDermott’s soaring tenor and dramatic interpretation were effective on “Hey There” and “What Kind of Fool,” but he would do well to reconsider his tendency to end every song by sliding off a long, held note. Although Damiano sounded a bit brassy whenever she reached into her top register, her versions of “Skylark” and “Night and Day” were lovely, employing a warm middle register at the service of sensitive, insightful readings.

But it was Pettiford’s superb singing and dancing that stole the show. A Tony-nominated (for “Fosse”) disciple of Bob Fosse, she pranced sensuously through his choreography for “Whatever Lola Wants,” “Mein Herr” and “All That Jazz.” Matching her svelte physical movements with her rich, warmly engaging contralto voice, she offered a brilliant display of the craft and the art that are intrinsic to the American musical theater.