Onstage with Bea Arthur

For longtime fans as well as twenty-something latecomers drawn to reruns of Maude and The Golden Girls, Bea Arthur On Broadway: Just Between Friends has been an essential point of pilgrimage since its opening on January 29 at the Booth Theater on Broadway. The show features the actress and her reminiscences of famous friends and landmark moments gathered over more than fifty years in show business.

Bea Arthur

Elegant and imposing from her silvery mane to her bare feet, Arthur scatters plenty of music throughout the show as well. Though not a classic warbler, she delivers 17 titles in her familiar husky baritone with a kind of no-nonsense sprechstimme that defies nitpicking criticism. Most of this material is delightfully offbeat, ranging from Cole Porter’s “I Happen to Like New York” to a riveting recreation of the Lotte Lenya performance of “Pirate Jenny,” from The Threepenny Opera.

She also performs “Fifty Percent” and several other songs written by Billy Goldenberg, a longtime friend, Emmy-winning composer, and Broadway legend. He’s seated at the S4 grand that Yamaha provided for the show. For Goldenberg, who owns an S series piano, this is a perfect perk. “I wrote all my best music on my Yamaha - it seemed to flow from it,” he says.

From their first rehearsal at the Booth, Arthur noticed the quality of the piano and detected a certain familiarity to what she had experienced when practicing with Goldenberg at his Manhattan flat. “She spent years working with me on my Yamaha piano,” he explains, “so when she heard this one at the theater, she said, ‘Billy, it sounds like your piano!’ And I said, ‘I know. Why shouldn’t it? After all ... they’re related.”

Due to its overwhelming success, the run of Just Between Friends has been extended twice. At this writing, performances continue through May 10.