By Harry Haun
12 Dec 2005

Hunter Foster, who's Leo Bloom in The Producers till the end of January, and the wife he met in Urinetown, Jennifer Cody, who's "Poopsie" in the upcoming Pajama Game, counted themselves among the evening's most contented customers. "I thought she was amazing 13 years ago when I saw Spider Woman," he said, "and she's still amazing. Ageless!"

"Amazing" was Jonathan Pryce's verdict as well. He replaces John Lithgow in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels on Jan. 17—and even resembles him a bit. "We've been friends since we did Comedians" (the 1977 seriocomedy that won Pryce the featured actor Tony).

Musically, the show taps into some of the abiding standards that have been major stops in her career—evergreens from Can-Can to Mr. Wonderful to Bye Bye Birdie et al—and rounding out the story of her life a little more are a couple of custom-fitted numbers by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Aherns: "Dancing on the Kitchen Table," which peeks in on her roiling domestic upbringing; and "A Woman the World Has Never Seen," which examines the roles she has played.

"Both songs actually came from interviews we did with Chita," Flaherty explained. "We said, 'Tell us about your family,' and she told us all these anecdotes. She said, 'My first gig was the kitchen table.' I said, 'What do you mean?' She said, 'At dinner time, we would all gather together, and I would dance and perform for my family. One night, finally, the table actually broke.' The concept of the second number came from Graciela. She said, 'I think there's something interesting about the relationship of an actress with the characters she has played,' so we sat down with Chita. We said, 'Tell us about Velma.' She told us all of her thoughts about the different characters and the different entrances, and what she thought about each character she played. And then we fashioned the number around the interview."

Two brothers and three sisters (including Lola Rivera, the Cabaret hostess at Danny's Skyline Room) were present from her real family, and endless representatives from her theatre family. You couldn't swing a cat without striking a co-star of some kind from, say, Sweet Charity (Ben Vereen, Eric Lamartiniere) or West Side Story (Alan Johnson, Harvey Evans, Genii Prior, Liane Plane and even her ex, Tony Mordente).

Their daughter, Lisa Mordente, came in from California. "I live on the West Coast now, much to her chagrin," she said, "but I'll be back here to start a musical-theatre workshop for kids. I want them to know who Jack Cole is and Jerome Robbins. We're going to teach vocal exercises and audition pieces. We'll start it here, then go all over the country."

The evening was quite special for her, she said. "When I was growing up and Mom was doing a show, we would have dinner at home at 4:30—placemats, no TV, just life. Then at 7:30, half-hour and it's Chita Rivera. So I was able to differentiate between the two. What happened tonight with this show was the two worlds blended for me for the first time."

Two snazzy fedoras with a button declaring "I Just Saw Chita!" decorated the individual tables around the room, but not all the guests could bring them off with real elan. Jamie DeRoy and Jim Caruso had the best luck with this, but the show's producer, Marty Bell, seemed a tad miscast. "Really?" he said, taken aback, "Most people tell me I'm right out of Guys and Dolls. Or The Godfather. I'm probably a scam artist from way back."

Needless to add, he's proud of his latest Bell-ringer. "The show was so much about passion, about how much Terrence and Graci and Chita and I love that whole era of the musical in the '50s. I got them all together. If you go through the whole lovely history, starting with Graci dancing in the Ballet de Monte Carlo and going to Paris on her day off and seeing West Side Story and getting on a plane the next week to come here. And you follow this through Graci, Terrence, Chita, me—we've all done a dozen shows together. We've had this incredible interrelationship, so it was natural that we would get together."

First and last, it's Chita's life and Chita's story and Chita's show. Daniele has staged it in a way that makes it seem she never leaves the stage, which, said the director, is not an illusion. "She's off stage for the intermission. In the first act, she goes off at the end of 'Gypsy Life' for about five seconds to drink some water, then for about ten seconds to put a skirt on for West Side Story, and about ten seconds at the end of West Side Story to take off the skirt. And that's it. That is it."

It's a stunning superwoman performance, even if you didn't know she was turning 73 next month, so you just have to ask her how she does it. "It's about spirit and if you feel you really believe in what you're doing," she insisted. "All of these people who have been in my life—these are people who deserve to be talked about. When you talk about them, it gives you more life. It gives you more energy—it really does—I'm so proud of this piece."

Chita Rivera and several of the cast members give their opening night curtain call.
photo by Aubrey Reuben

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