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Hell hath no fury like a scorned town slut who comes back home late in life, a millionairess many times over, and demands the local denizens administer some outstanding checkbook justice to the guy who done her wrong when they were young. You've not seen such a show of hands since "Murder on the Orient Express"!
In The Visit, this amounts to municipal murder, pure and complicated, and it comes with music, too — an original Broadway score, achingly exquisite and buoyantly melodic, that would dress up any season (up to and including the one that is confronting us now with Spider-Man, Bonnie & Clyde, Lysistrata Jones, Rebecca, Ghost, Newsies, et al).
Okay, so you don't go out humming the morality. When, in their glorious 42-year collaboration, did John Kander and Fred Ebb, ever make it easy for us? Lynch mob and Nazi rule and trial-by-newspapers — this is grist for their musical mill — and, usually, the more difficult the subject, the more soaring the sounds.
photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN |
The show was originally set to open on Broadway March 15, 2001, with Angela Lansbury as "the richest woman in the world," Claire Zachanassian, but the actress withdrew because of the failing health and subsequent death of her husband.
Chita Rivera took over the star part, opposite John McMartin, the following fall for a full staging at Chicago's Goodman, directed by Frank Galati and choreographed by Ann Reinking. But the national fallout from 9/11 weighed like lead on the show, and it was considered much too dark for the times, and that mood hadn't lifted three years later when a version tried to — and couldn't — get off the ground at The Public with Rivera and Frank Langella.
photo by Scott Suchman |
"I've heard nothing," Rivera admitted at the after-party wind-down at John's Pizzeria, but it was clear her heart was high and hopeful. "We'll see what happens so say your prayers." This has been her standard response every critical stop of the way, and it is obvious she has grown in the role and gotten used to it. Claire, the Lady Z she plays, is like a return of her Spider-Woman — the tarantula division. Over the years her steel resolve has thickened, and her preposterous plan for revenge takes hold.
She is more challenged as an actress than she has ever been before — and not just because, as a dancer, she is working with the handicap of having to play a character with a wooden leg who comes and goes on a sedan-chair throne toted by two burly beefcakes and guarded by a couple of nattering eunuchs. Happily, for a song in the second act ("I Would Never Leave You"), she joins her eccentric entourage for some high-stepping. You never saw a wooden leg kicked so high. The audience went wild.
Rivera admitted she had to modify her dancing a bit for the Ambassador — but only because "the stage is very small here. Otherwise, it's about the way it's always been."
Her favorite moment is the gasps she gets making her final appearance on stage. "I've always loved that moment," she said, "because it really finishes the story."
photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN |
"It's great to do a Kander-and-Ebb again, with Terrence McNally, but the real thrill was to be able to work with Chita again," he said, having not done it since 1969 when they did a two-city tour (L.A. and Frisco) for the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera.
"We did a Meredith Willson musical called 1491. I played Columbus, and she played my mistress — a lusty wench, as I remember. We didn't make it to the New World."
The show that won Cullum a Tony nomination and the Theatre World Award, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, is making its first Broadway comeback Dec. 11, in a radically re-imagined form. "I know that the book needed something," Cullum recalled about the original. "It didn't work that well originally. The music was gorgeous. I tried to rewrite some of the lines and get the book a little straighter. It was long-winded, particularly for the part I played, but I didn't do anything nearly as drastic as these people are doing — and I hope it succeeds."
They were supported by a Visit ensemble of 21, most of whom came from the Signature production and all of whom were still wearing Reinking's choreography well.
"Annie did come to help us," noted Brian O'Brien, one of the taller drinks of water among the town folk who really struts his stuff for the "Yellow Shoes" first-act finale . "She was in town last week because she was 'dance supervisor' for Mandy and Patti. All the movement you saw tonight was Annie's."
One of Chicago's "secret weapons" (a surefire Billy Flynn stand-by), O'Brien was pleased with the re-turnout. "It was great to work with the team we had down at Signature. I think we had a majority of the cast back."
photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN |
Kander, too, was cheered by the assembled players and felt they all rose to the occasion. "They flew themselves in to be here. It was thrilling — particularly because we had practically no rehearsal and the cast never had a run-through."
Not the least of the show's virtues is a heartbreaking ballad, arguably one of their upper-echelon songs, called "Love and Love Alone," and Rivera has included it in her nightclub act just so it will get out and about. "I think it may be the best love lyric that Fred ever wrote," Kander said. "It's a brilliant lyric, and I'm very proud of him for doing it."
Deserving a deep bow for the evening was its director, Carl Andress. "We put it together in two weeks with this extraordinary company — Chita and John and Annie Reinking and the Signature people. I'm very proud of all of us," he said.
photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN |
To learn more about the works of Terrence McNally, John Kander and Fred Ebb, or shows that starred Chita Rivera and John Cullum, visit PlaybillVault.com, the newly launched largest Broadway database on the internet.