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Broadway's Greatest




To make the cut, you have to be a diva presently alive, and be someone I have seen on-stage. (I'm lucky!)

(5) Lea Salonga. Salonga was still a teenager when she landed the lead role in "Miss Saigon," and her performance is the stuff of legend. She won the Tony Award. On the Broadway recording, her voice is flawless. She's also tough, vulnerable, innocent, cold, desperate, and flirtatious. She again triumphed on Broadway as Eponine in "Les Miserables" and as Fantine in "Les Miserables." If she spent more time on the New York stage, she would likely rank higher than #5.

(4) Kristin Chenoweth. Chenoweth has done iconic Broadway work: "Wicked," "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown," "On the Twentieth Century," I also liked her in "Promises, Promises." She has an astounding voice; she's comfortable with opera, country music, pop music, Broadway standards. She has split-the-atom energy; the cliche word "radiant" is appropriate here. She sometimes tries a bit too hard, as the legend Barbara Cook once implied, in a bitchy (and accurate) interview.

(3) Sutton Foster. People pegged her as a comedienne with dance skills, but she is more than that. Having established herself with light fare, she took on darker territory: Sondheim ("Anyone Can Whistle"), "Chess," "Violet," "Sweet Charity." Even when she isn't singing, she has a compelling, stoic, thoughtful quality; to borrow from the speeches of Norma Desmond, Sutton can say what she wants with her eyes.

(2) Patti LuPone. LuPone has more career achievements than most Broadway divas. She created the title role in Evita. She gave buzz-generating reinterpretations of several major Sondheim roles: Fosca, Mrs. Lovett, Momma Rose, the lush in "Company." Patti was the first Fantine and the first Norma Desmond. If she had started later in the twentieth century, she might have given Broadway the cold shoulder by her thirtieth birthday. (Thank goodness she started when she started.) Obviously, beyond LuPone's longevity and her commitment to Broadway, there's the fact of her booming voice, charisma, and intensity.

(1) Bernadette Peters. Peters is the one and only person on this list to originate both a major Sondheim role and a major ALW role. The Sondheim roles: Dot and the Witch. The ALW role: the lead in "Song and Dance" (for which Peters won her first Tony). Peters has great intelligence; she can suggest deep layers of pain in an apparently mild or neutral observation. Listen to her in "Follies," when Buddy arrives, and she says, "Oh, you're here." How many other people could say so much with three words? Peters is still breaking hearts past the age of seventy; her interpretation of the lead role in "Dolly" was confident, many-hued, and even a little bit Chekhovian. She made a slightly cartoonish character seem human and 3-D. She is just the best.

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