Bea Arthur on Broadway - Just Between Friends
More comedy monologue than musical performance,Bea Arthur's one-woman showBea Arthur on Broadway: Just Between Friendscollects memories from the silver-haired star's life on Broadway (Fiddler on the Roof,Mame,The Threepenny Opera) and television (Maude,The Golden Girls)."I wanted to see if I had the guts to just come and be myself," Arthur says in this performance recorded in front of a live audience in December 2001. Alongside co-creator and pianistBilly Goldenberg, she offers wry and often funny anecdotes about her career and the people she's worked with (Angela Lansbury, Pia Zadora). When she does sing ... well, even decades ago Arthur didn't have a beautiful voice, but she's well-suited to the comedy songs. And her versions of Kurt Weill's "Pirate Jenny" and Goldenberg's own "Fifty Percent"--while they won't make anyone forgetLotte LenyaorDorothy Loudon--are effective in their own right.Bea Arthur on Broadwayis definitely more Bea than Broadway, but it's a career well worth remembering.--David Horiuchi