MEDIA 2006
A PERFORMER OF METTLE AND STEEL PHILLIP McCARTHY It's passe to wish Chita Rivera a jaunty, pre-show "break a leg!" even if that's stage-door etiquette. She's been there, done that. It was exactly 20 years and four months ago and, as a result, she's a woman of formidable molecular structure: muscle, bone and metal. The screws bracing her left leg set off metal detectors, but they also make her the steeliest magnolia on Broadway. Rivera was driving in from the rural retreat where she lives just outside New York to do the Jerry Herman tribute, Jerry's Girls, in New York's theatre district. There was a nasty crash and her leg was broken in 12 places. It stopped the show but clearly not the career because, here she is, still going strong at 73. Rivera, always a dual song and dance performer, survived on ballads and Bernstein till she got her Fosse and fandango back. But it was seven years before she got back to Broadway and shows like Nine, with Antonio Banderas, and her Tony-winning turn in Kiss of the Spider Woman. "Oh, that," she says now in her smoky alto voice, when the talk turns to the accident. "It was one of those things that happen that make you stronger, make you refocus. For me, recovering was doing cabarets upstate and on cruise ships and then doing an out-of-town run of one of the first shows I ever did, Can-Can, to see if I was up for it. I'd tell choreographers, 'You can have two splits and that's it'." Rivera, clearly, is a woman of mettle as well metal. She looks like a pilates instructor. She's your quintessential, worked out, hard-body; all taut angles, curves in the right places and, of course, those amazing legs. She has that rich, Latin complexion that seems to repel the years and the lines; and dark easy-care hair that falls in frizzy curls around her shoulders. You have to wonder if there is something in the water in the bucolic spot north of New York that is home. It's certainly no retirement place. In the lead-up to this year's Tony Awards, Broadway's annual congratulatory rite, Rivera snagged her ninth career nod for a well-reviewed autobiographical ensemble musical called Chita Rivera: A Dancer's Life. She didn't win the Tony, but the nod sealed a status issue. When they put your name up for a Tony, for playing yourself in a musical about your life, you have to be a Living Legend. Even Barbara Cook and Elaine Stritch haven't managed a bio-show this big. But then Rivera has been up and down the Great White Way in musicals that literally run from A to Z. They start with Anything Goes (2000) and finish at Zorba (1968). Look at it another way and Rivera's Broadway career - always equal parts conga and crooning, mambo and melody - is a primer on half a century of the American musical and, for that matter, of America itself from the Cold War till now. In 1957 she was the original Anita, the plucky immigrant girl next door, in the shockingly topical Sondheim-Bernstein classic Westside Story (1957). That was three years before Kennedy was elected president. She was the original homicidal Velma strutting the cellblock in the shockingly cynical Chicago (1975), which arrived when the US was reeling from Vietnam and mired in its bitter post-Watergate funk. She lives alone now, but she hasn't always. She had an affair with Sammy Davis Jnr (confirmed on the Broadway stage in A Dancer's Life). And in all the emotional and social intensity surrounding Westside Story in 1957 she fell for one of the dancers, Tony Mordente, a handsome Italian now a TV director. They were married for nine years and have a daughter. "The jealous type," A Dancer's Life suggests. They divorced in 1965. "In this business it's not who you've slept with but who you've danced with," Rivera says, as Chita the character, on stage in A Dancer's Life (book by Terrence McNally). It was something special if you manage to do both because Rivera never married again. It proves, though, that J-Lo and Britney Spears weren't the first women with big and busy showbiz careers who fell for a hot dancer smouldering in the back of the line. Rivera's in Australia at the moment, finishing up a seven-stand cabaret season in Sydney - with four more concerts in Melbourne this week. She likes, she says, the stretch of mixing Broadway and cabaret. "Someone asked me whether the reason I do cabaret, being a of a certain age, is because I get to sit down, talk with the help of a mike and maybe sing a little," she says. "And I said, 'you've obviously never seen my cabaret show'. I could never get into that idea of sitting on stool with a mike, so I don't. I sit down when I lead into I Won't Dance (Can't Make Me). But that's for effect and the audience gets it. Push yourself, or you'll wither." It turns out Rivera was fleetingly in Australia once before; back when she was trying to jumpstart her career after that fateful drive to the theatre. She flew in for just one night to pick up the cruise ship she was working for a voyage to Japan. "It was around 1986, 1987," she says a bit too vaguely. "And I remember having dinner and thinking, 'I hope I get back here to work'." That brief visit was the beginning of what turned out to be the dazzling second act of her life. Now, she's back, just as she hoped, and she's working. With a break between the end of the Broadway run of A Dancer's Life since February and the start of its national tour after the new year, Rivera dusted off a pacey new cabaret set, And Now I Sing, that had a run in New York last year. "You like to think of yourself as a well-rounded, variety performer," she says. "I love doing musicals and I particularly love (A Dancer's Life). But the thing is I also would have liked to have toured and sung, like Rosemary Clooney did or been a jazz singer like Ella Fitzgerald. And I just love having my own band. And the guys who worked with me at Feinstein's were hip and hot and fun and it was breathtaking." Rivera's take on her age/image dilemma is pretty firm: it's identity theft. She's a supple young woman who must have ended up saddled with an older woman's birth certificate. If she is 73, shouldn't she be playing cards and drinking Milo? She's quite prepared, at some distant point, to hang up her tango heels and do Big Spender without the lewd gyration. But not yet. And don't think for a minute she's going to sit sedately on a stool during her shows in Melbourne and sing Moon River either. Rivera never did Follies, another big Sondheim show that contains one of the great diva classic, I'm Still Here. Maybe she should just do the song anyway. |
DIVAS DELIVER THE GOODS WITH PANACHE DEBORAH JONES CHITA Rivera likes to joke that she's about 40 years old, but given the shape her legs are in, she could probably get away with claiming to be 30. Broadway, where Rivera made her debut in 1950 at the age of 17 (do the calculations yourself), has been kind to her. And she's been good for Broadway. She was Anita in the original production of West Side Story, Rosie in Bye Bye Birdie opposite Dick Van Dyke, the first Velma Kelly in Chicago and the star of Kiss of the Spider Woman among many, many other shows. Her name is so big in musical theatre that Terrence McNally recently wrote a Broadway show for her and about her: The Dancer's Life, described in The New York Times as the "must-have ticket for aficionados of the American musical". So she's still got it, and in some ways it's a surprise to find her appearing in a couple of small venues in Sydney and Melbourne with just a trio backing her. Debbie Reynolds, after all, was filling out the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House just days before Rivera opened in The Studio, which is as small as it sounds. The power of film versus stage plays a part, no doubt, but it's also a tribute to Rivera's obvious desire to connect closely with an audience, and the audience on the opening night last Saturday adored her. Rivera has a wealth of great material to choose from and she moves through it at speed; possibly too much speed, as her set lasts just one hour. A warm, self-deprecating raconteur and still an enviably sassy mover, Rivera fared best vocally at the extremes of big numbers and quiet ones. The middle ground was muddied by a sound mix that - at least where I was sitting, close to the stage - pushed the bass way too far forward and was at a volume that did Rivera no service. George and Ira Gershwin's Our Love is Here to Stay, sung to piano accompaniment with an intimate, breathy tone and the wisdom of age, and the brassy All That Jazz, from Chicago, were exemplary. Not far away from the Opera House geographically but light years away in style, @Newtown showcases another diva, iOTA, who is electrifying audiences in the super-grungy rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch. The "internationally ignored" vocalist only wants what everyone does: love, acceptance and worldwide fame. A poorly executed sex-change operation complicates matters for Hedwig, who was born Hansel in East Berlin. To make matters worse, she has been abandoned by her lover - the lover she turned into a rock star, thank you very much - and is now living in a US trailer park. John Cameron Mitchell's clever, not always entirely clear, book has serious philosophical underpinnings if you want to look for them, but there's more than enough appeal in the savagely witty, trash-talking surface and raucous rock-punk-country-ballad-whatever score. More or less alone except for her kick-arse backing band (terrific music direction by Tina Harris; great back-up singing from Blazey Best), Hedwig holds court in a kind of confessional one-transsexual show. We are spared no detail, all of it related with fabulous panache. For instance, when Hedwig woke up after the operation, she had a bleeding gash: "My first day as a woman and already it's that time of the month," she drawls. Atta girl, Hedwig. But when the wound heals there's that angry inch left, both outside and in. I can imagine another performance with more vulnerability but iOTA takes the defiant path. His indomitable Hedwig, seedily glamorous in mini-dress and truckloads of glittery lippie, is loud, proud, mouthy and very, very ballsy. |
DEBBIE REYNOLDS AND CHITA RIVERA BRYCE HALLETT The adage "they don't make them like that any more" holds true for troupers Debbie Reynolds and Chita Rivera: entertainers in the old-fashioned sense who are sassy, good-humoured and full of spark. Reynolds, whose dazzling gold dress could probably light up Vegas, presented less a stroll down memory lane than a loose scrapbook of her movies, famous co-stars and showbiz gossip. Her impressions of Katharine Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich were near-perfect while her impersonation of Streisand was kookily diverting. Aside from a brief foray into rap, a couple of bawdy jokes and her amazement that anyone under 50 would be at her show, Reynolds's concert is heavy on nostalgia and make-up. "It's hard at my age, you know ... I look great to you [people] back there," she says pointing to the gods. "But up here I look like a hooker!" The savvy veteran beats the audience to the punchline when it comes to her age. But a museum piece she is not, at least not on the strength of this hearty package with music director Joey Singer and bustling band. The best songs in delivery and poise were I Love the Piano and Tammy but the show's medley-style format gave most tunes a similar jauntiness. Reynolds interpolates Sondheim's defiant I'm Still Here with her own remarkable career story as a star at MGM, then as a veteran who outlasted her leading men. It's all very cheesy and light. What Singin' in the Rain did for Reynolds's career in Hollywood in the early '50s happened to Chita Rivera when she played Anita in West Side Story on Broadway in 1957. Two stars were born; Rivera arriving via a high-voltage character built of fiery ambition and set in a story of romance and racial division. Rivera is a theatre animal with great discipline, dynamism and heart. When she sings the words "my memories burn in my head with a steady glow ... " she skilfully applies her innate rhythm to make them vibrant and clear, qualities amply displayed in her brilliant rendering of Carousel from Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. The Broadway diva has made a career out of playing feisty and fallible women drawn to life's darker side. She eloquently sets the scene for her career stepping-stones and Tony Award triumphs, including Sweet Charity, West Side Story, Bye Bye Birdie, Chicago and Kiss of the Spider Woman. Each turn is unsentimental and gutsy but there's light and shade amid the belting, full-throated attack. Her versions of A Boy Like That (West Side Story), Class and Nowadays (Chicago) are plucky and charming while her sassy delivery of All That Jazz is sensational. She is given fine support from her "cool trio": musical director David Krane on piano, Dave Ellis on bass guitar and Ron Lemke on drums. Rivera is a consummate cabaret artist in the league of Barbara Cook and Elaine Stritch, with a blend of power and intrigue that is unforgettable. She's also got great legs. There shouldn't be an empty seat in the house. |
CHITA RIVERA! DOWN UNDER BRAD SYKE A twin-Tony, all-singing, all-dancing Broadway star downunder. No, not what's under the bonnet of a Ferrari Superamerica ('though it might be a strangely apt comparison), but the overdue local advent of 'the real thing', as Liza intoned. |
CHITA RIVERA! DOWN UNDER PHILLIP McCARTHY It's passe to wish Chita Rivera a jaunty, pre-show "break a leg" even if that's the etiquette. Been there, done that 20 years ago and, as a result, she's a woman of formidable molecular structure: muscle, bone and metal. The screws bracing her left leg set off metal detectors, but they also make her the steeliest magnolia on Broadway. And perhaps the wisest. Rivera was driving to perform in Jerry's Girls in New York; there was a nasty crash, her leg was broken in 12 places and it stopped the show. But not the career. Miraculously, she was treading the boards a year later. Shows such as Nine, with Antonio Banderas, and her Tony-winning turn in Kiss of the Spider Woman were still ahead. "Oh, that," she says today in her smoky alto, when talk turns to the accident. "It was one of those things that happen that make you stronger, make you refocus. For me, recovering was doing cabarets upstate and on cruise ships and then doing an out-of-town run of one of the first shows I ever did, Can-Can. I'd tell choreographers, 'You can have two splits and that's it."'Rivera, clearly, is a woman of mettle as well as metal. Actually, she looks like a Pilates instructor; at 73, she's all taut angles and curves in the right places - and did I mention legs? A couple of months ago at the Tony awards, Broadway's annual congratulatory rite, Rivera picked up her ninth Tony nomination for a well-reviewed autobiographical musical called Chita Rivera: A Dancer's Life. That nod pretty much certified her status as a living legend. When you're nominated for a Tony for playing yourself in a musical about your life, how could you not have icon status? Even Barbara Cook and Elaine Stritch haven't got that one. Rivera has credits in musicals on the Great White Way that run literally from A to Z: from Anything Goes (2000) to Zorba (1968). Look at it another way and Rivera's Broadway career - always equal parts conga and crooning, mambo and melody - is a first-person primer on half a century of the American musical and, for that matter, of America itself from the Cold War until now. In 1957 she was the original Anita, plucky immigrant girl next door, in the then shockingly topical West Side Story. That was three years before Kennedy was elected president. She was the original homicidal Velma strutting the cellblock in the then shockingly cynical Chicago in 1975, which arrived when the country was still reeling from Vietnam and mired in its bitter post-Watergate funk. Not that she's about to let that lofty status weigh her down. Rivera clearly likes the idea of being versatile. That versatility - being able to switch from Broadway to cabaret while recovering from her accident, for example - was one reason her career didn't wither in the 1980s. Her Broadway producers for A Dancer's Life were probably less than thrilled that she was heading off to Australia to do a cabaret show, but there was probably no stopping her. Her Australian cabaret gigs, which start tonight at the Opera House, sit rather awkwardly between the Broadway season of A Dancer's Life and the show's year-long, 20-city US tour starting next year. It's a relatively big show with a cast of 10, including Rivera, and the producers would have preferred that she concentrate on the transition from fixed house to touring show. "You like to think of yourself as a well-rounded variety performer," she says. "I love doing musicals and I particularly love [A Dancer's Life]. But the thing is, I also would have liked to have toured and sung like Rosemary Clooney did, or been a jazz singer like Ella Fitzgerald. And I just love having my own band. "Rivera touched down in Australia once before; she "hopped a cruise ship" leaving for Japan next morning. It was one of the cruises she worked on while getting back on her feet after the crash. "It was around 1986, 1987 and I remember having dinner and thinking, 'I hope I get back here to work."' So that visit was, in a way, the beginning of this Broadway Baby's second act. For a while it looked as if the closely timed shows on opposite sides of the world might cause other logistical problems. Rivera's personal performance of some of her signature show tunes is controlled by the producers of A Dancer's Life until the end of the US tour next year. The fear is that if she sang them elsewhere, the show's appeal would ebb. The songs affected include the Spider Woman catalogue, her big number, America from West Side Story and Big Spender from Sweet Charity. But what's a Rivera cabaret show if you take away those numbers? She wasn't allowed to do them in New York, but this time the producers thought better of invoking their contractual rights. "They own me for the next year," she says. "But this is the first time I've played in Australia and I really wanted to do them all. I asked them nicely and they finally said, 'OK'." You get the feeling that it doesn't take a sharp producer too long to figure out that arguing with Rivera is a lost cause. Of course, if she had lost some of her signature numbers, she could have always included one from another Sondheim show, Follies. That anthem, I'm Still Here, could have been written for Rivera. |
CHITA RIVERA - BORN TO SING AND DANCE ROSALIE HIGSON Chita Rivera's ageless legs have still got rhythm, even the one held together with steel pins, writes Rosalie Higson. When it comes to musical theatre, Chita Rivera is a one-woman dynamo. Since her Broadway debut at 17 in 1950, she has received two Tony awards and seven other nominations. The dancer, singer and actor created the roles of Anita in the original production of West Side Story and Velma in the original production of Chicago. For more than 50 years she has worked with and appeared alongside the biggest names in American musical theatre. The legendary performer is now making her first visit to Australia, to appear in cabaret in Sydney and Melbourne. Looking remarkably lively ("Well, I'm only 40," she jokes huskily), Rivera still has the bright spark that has powered her through five decades on the stage. Rivera was born in Washington, DC. Her father, a Puerto Rican musician, died when she was seven. She was a natural show-off, and at 11 her mother threw her into ballet classes to burn up some of Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero's excess energy. "I was a tree climber, a bike rider, and I had to have my feet on the handlebars. And I broke the furniture! We had a glass coffee table and I would jump from chair to chair and finally I jumped and broke the table, and my mother said, 'Get her out of here!"' Ballet proved to be just the thing. "I loved it," Rivera says, "apart from After six years of ballet school, at 14 she was chosen to audition in New York for George Balanchine's School of American Ballet. She won a scholarship to the academy and moved to New York, where she danced hard and completed high school. One fateful day she went along to support a friend who was auditioning for a part in the chorus of a Broadway show, Call Me Madam. Her friend didn't get the part but Rivera did, as one of the four principal dancers. Rivera's tremendous joie de vivre was bound to lead her away from ballet sooner or later. "I loved to laugh," she says, "I loved to clown around, and part of me was good for the ballet, but I wanted a variety of things to do. And the only other thing you can do in ballet is character work." At the audition, a new door opened. "Instead of going into the ballet door, I went into the theatre door," she says. "When I auditioned, I loved it. Loved doing theatre dance, jazz, modern. I called my mum: 'Mum they're offering me $200 a week!' So mum came up and took charge, and I was off." At first, Rivera says, she just wanted to please the choreographer. Critics and audiences really took notice when she did a Marilyn Monroe impersonation in a variety show in the early 1950s. Then came Seventh Heaven with heart-throb Ricardo Montalban and Gloria DeHaven. "They thought that he and I were having an affair because we would take off every Saturday. How I wish! Where were we going? We were going to mass!" In 1957, a friend mentioned a new show about gangs, a Puerto Rican gang and an Italian gang, a gritty urban retelling of Romeo and Juliet with words and music by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim. West Side Story established Rivera as a leading Broadway star. The show was an immediate hit, but the hardworking cast was almost oblivious to its success, she says. "We were working on, I call it the innards, the inside of something," she says. "So you don't step outside and say, 'Oh, that's what it looks like.' When we did our first run-through, and everybody in the audience was standing and screaming, we were looking at each other: 'Are they crazy, what is this?' "We knew it was important, because of the subject matter, but other than that we were just busy trying not to be killed by Jerome Robbins!" Rivera credits the choreographer with enabling her to realise her distinct personality as a dancer. "It's never too hard when it comes to a choreographer and a dancer, never too hard," she says. "And if you're wise, you do as you're told. We didn't have an opinion in those days, we just did it. "Nowdays dancers have an opinion. Choreographers do push you, because dancing is not easy, the body is not meant to do the things we are asked to do. But if you complain and think you know a better way, you never get to learn. You never get to know what you are capable of doing. It's the only reason I'm sitting here now, at my age - 40! Take chances and go beyond what you think you are capable of." She made the role of fiery Anita her own: "I intended to. But casting is very important. They see something in you that is right for that role. You don't know what it is, you're just being yourself. Then you listen and do as you're told and speak great words and sing great songs and do great dances, and then, it's you." Rivera laughs when asked about the film version of West Side Story, which won 10 Academy Awards and featured Rita Moreno in the Anita role. She was invited to audition, but was in rehearsals for Bye Bye Birdie and felt it was unprofessional to jump ship. "Thank God the show was a hit. Otherwise..." she laughs and mimes cutting her throat. With Larry Kurtz, the actor who played Tony on Broadway, she would emote outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, where the film was showing. "We'd throw a fit as we passed, then go on as normal. 'Oh, we're fine, it's not bothering us at all. Waahhh!!"' And once more, she laughs mightily. "Stardom is not something you can plan, it happens to you," she says. "You have got to have a sense of humour, that's my advice to anyone who wants to go into show business. If you don't have a sense of humour, you are out of your mind." In 1986 Rivera had a car accident, breaking her leg in 16 places. Not even that could keep her down, although her leg is now held together with pins. Within a year she was up dancing again, and in high heels. She went on the road with Can-Can, backed by the Rockettes. "People said, 'We're very happy to have you back, but why Can-Can?' And they're right, it's all splits and cartwheels!" Rivera refused to heed the warnings. "That defeats the whole purpose of really getting strong. I did tell my choreographer you can have four cartwheels and four splits, and that's it." Seven years later, Rivera won her first Tony for her role in Terrence McNally's Kiss of the Spider Woman, which required a hard tango, rhythmic struts and a slide down a rope; enough to test any dancer. (Her second was for McNally's The Rink in 1984.) McNally also wrote Chita Rivera: A Dancer's Life, which played on Broadway earlier this year and earned her another Tony nomination. In Sydney and Melbourne, Rivera will be performing excerpts from her life in cabaret. Officially, there's no dancing, but as she says with a laugh, "I can't stop myself!" |
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FAITH PRINCE - A LEAP OF FAITH VITO MATTARELLI Cabaret and musical theatre have a strong following in this fine city of ours. Very often, the magical evenings created in a cabaret setting, originate from a musical theatre performer’s career and experience. Last weekend the newly created Sofitel Supper Club hosted a magical evening with the first series of Melbourne appearances from one of Broadway’s most beloved leading ladies, Faith Prince. The show chronicled the career of this Southern gal who had dreams of “changing her postcode”. With a selection of songs including The Other Side of the Tracks (Little Me) to Somewhere that’s Green/Suddenly Seymour (Little Shop of Horrors), to her Tony-winning interpretation of Miss Adelaide’s Lament (Guys and Dolls), there was no doubt that this is a performer with impeccable comic timing and an engaging presence. Travelling seemlessly with endless highlights, the well-scripted show included hilarious anecdotes (Jack Jones trying to remember the word “mule” in a summer stock production tied with the Hermione-the-Duck saga). With it’s poignant moments (The Party’s Over and Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You), a more personal side was revealed. Faith Prince proved herself to be not only “gratious, with an edge”, but also a singer/comedienne with a strong, clear vocal style suited to both the vast auditorium or intimate cabaret setting. Ably supported by Alex Rybeck on the piano and local musician Emile Nelson (and a special guest perfomer), A Leap of Faith turned out to be an excellent evening’s entertainment. For those mortals unable to travel to the Great White Way, our thanks can only go to Nancy Cato and Martin Croft for being able to bring a slice of Broadway to Melbourne. It’s no secret that in August, the legendary Chita Rivera will be presented. The queue at the box office starts this week. |
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FAITHFUL REWARDED PETER BURCH FAITH Prince is an incandescent Broadway star. Her Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards, together with Tony best actress nominations, long ago affirmed this status. |
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FUNNY, SOFT, WICKED, BEGUILING: THERE'S LIFE IN THIS CABARET JIM MURPHY
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FAITH PRINCE
Faith Prince was the ideal choice for the inauguration of this new venue. She is bright, funny, extremely versatile and very talented. As a singer, comic and dramatic actress, Faith has performed on the Broadway stage, regional theatre, summer stock, movies and television. She has a list of facial expressions, singing and speaking voices as long as your arm. People relate with Faith's on-stage performance because she is real. She is you and I. From the moment Faith steps on to the stage she creates a rapport with her audience. Arriving in Melbourne after three performances in Sydney, Faith was well and truly over her jet lag. She has even started to speak our language: take- away, chemist. To avoid giving away any of the spontaneity of her performance, let me just say that she gives you a little bit of everything that has helped to make for a successful career as a performer. Don't miss this limited opportunity to put a bit of Faith in your life. |
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SHOW TUNES SHOW FAITH WELL PLACED
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A VOICE MADE FOR BROADWAY
She's singing the theme song of the Ray Anthony band at a private house right on one of Sydney's beaches, and in a musical interlude - this is part of the act - she makes a phone call to her son at home in Los Angeles. A roll of stickytape improvises as the telephone handset. |
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ATTRACTING THE SPOTLIGHT A MATTER OF FAITH
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