“In my cabaret show,” the legendary Chita Rivera reminisces, “I talk about seeing a poster for ‘Bye Bye Birdie,’ then a bus driving by with a sign on it for ‘West Side Story,’ and thinking “Shouldn’t I be someplace at 8 o’clock tonight?'”
That anecdote describes Broadway in 2009, when two shows that had originally starred Rivera both underwent major revivals.
Rivera could have that same feeling about Connecticut right now. This month, the Goodspeed Opera House has “Bye Bye Birdie,” Connecticut Repertory Theatre is doing “West Side Story” and the Ivoryton Playhouse is performing “Chicago.” At the end of the month, the Clay & Wattles Theater Company in Bethlehem offers up a lesser-known item found on the extensive Chita Rivera resume, “Zorba.”
But the Broadway diva, who’s now 83 years old and has been in the pantheon of musical theater stars for more than half a century, needn’t worry about curtain times right now. The reason she’ll be in Connecticut on Monday, July 11, is to receive the Goodspeed Award for Outstanding Contribution to Musical Theatre.
Goodspeed Musicals has presented this award since 2001. Past recipients include Ira Gershwin, Tommy Tune, Julie Andrews, Jerry Herman, Kristin Chenoweth and Sheldon Harnick. Last year the award was given to designer Tony Walton, who happened to do the sets for “Chicago,” the show in which Rivera (as Velma Kelly) introduced the song “All That Jazz.”
The Outstanding Contribution to Musical Theatre award will be handed to Rivera by “Bye Bye Birdie” composer Charles Strouse. Besides the awards ceremony, the July 11 event — a fundraiser for Goodspeed’s New Works Fund — will feature performances by Maurice Hines Jr., Karen Mason and others, plus cocktails and dinner.
“I’ve known Goodspeed for so many years. And now Peter Gennaro’s son is the new artistic director there!” Rivera gushes during a recent phone interview from her New York home. She worked with the elder Gennaro when he was Jerome Robbins’ co-choreographer for the original 1957 Broadway production of “West Side Story.” Michael Gennaro became the executive director of Goodspeed Musicals last year.
Knowing that the shows she helped establish are still in high demand delights Rivera.
“I’m happy that kids are getting an opportunity to do these wonderful roles,” she said. Rivera certainly doesn’t feel proprietary. “When an actor tells me ‘That’s my part,’ that’s not necessarily true.”
Rivera wasn’t able to re-create the roles of Anita and Rosie when “West Side Story” and “By Bye Birdie” were made into major motion pictures in the ’60s. “When the movie of ‘West Side’ was being done, I was doing ‘Birdie’ and remember thinking, ‘Thank God this is a hit.'”
Some shows, of course, haven’t found the same long-lasting success. Of the Kander/Ebb musical “The Visit,” which she has helped guide through several incarnations over the past 15 years (including a short run on Broadway in 2015), Rivera says: “I still believe that at the right time in the right theater…”
Of course, her memories of her greatest hits are more grounded and realistic than the grand legends those shows have become. “I clearly remember ‘West Side Story’ not getting the Tony. I remember people walking out of ‘Chicago.'”
As for “Bye Bye Birdie,” “Tom Poston — you know, the comic actor? — called me, the day before I was reading for it. ‘Chita,’ he said, ‘I just went to a reading of ‘Bye Bye Birdie.’ It’s just awful.’ Then when I got the script, I thought ‘Kids on telephones? That will never work.'” Rivera conspired with her agent to leave the reading of “Birdie” early. “But when I heard the first half of the show, I flipped. I said ‘I just have to do this.’ It goes to show ya — or it shows to go ya — that you just never know.”
No Stranger To CT Stages
Rivera’s cabaret act, which she’s performed in various formats since the 1970s, was an example of Rivera making the most of a bad situation. During the early readings of “Chicago,” the show’s director/choreographer Bob Fosse had a heart attack. “We were released from the project, so John Kander and Fred Ebb got together with [choreographer] Ron Field and said ‘Let’s do a club act.’ Because I’d been lucky enough to have so many great experiences in the theater with such talented people, I had great material.”
Rivera has brought that act to venues such as the 1970s New York gay club Grand Finale, to, just a couple of months ago, The Cafe Carlyle in the Carlyle Hotel on East 76th Street. “I never wanted to play the Carlyle, because it’s so tiny. But I loved it. Each place you play, you play the space. It makes you react in a different manner.”
Rivera has never performed at the Goodspeed, but is no stranger to Connecticut stages. Some of her many appearances in the state include the pre-Broadway tryout of the musical “Seventh Heaven” at New Haven’s Shubert in 1955, starring in “Sweet Charity” at the Oakdale Theatre in Wallingford in 1967 and taking part in an all-star tribute to John Kander at the Westport Country Playhouse in 2007.
“I think we really did it right in the old days when we took a show out of town. Great things happened on the road. That was my life, years before I had a child — I did the tents.” She misses the time when “shows used to run for two years, or you’d go on tour — it was a great test for you, to keep it alive.” These days, she fears, “we’re teaching our audiences not to listen as much. These shows live, they really live. It’s up to us to make them palatable.”
Which brings her back to the Goodspeed. “It’s great that people have a place they can go to, where they can see the great shows again, and where young talented people have the opportunity to do those parts.”
For the new generations of performers who are re-creating characters Rivera made famous, she has some advice: “I keep telling the kids today, for God’s sake, don’t forget to laugh!” she say, laughing. “Life’s a drag otherwise, isn’t it?”
THE GOODSPEED GALA, with guest of honor Chita Rivera, happens Monday, July 11 at Priam Vineyard, 11 Shailor Hill Road, Colchester. The event begins with a cocktail hour at 6:30 p.m., followed at 7:30 p.m. by dinner, live entertainment and the awards ceremony. Tickets begin at $500. Information: 860-873-8664, ext.368, goodspeed.org.
