There's not much to cheer about regarding the new musical, Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life. Once you get past Rivera's relatively brief incarnations as her best characters from years past (such as Anita, the role she created in West Side Story, the original Velma in the musical Chicago, or the title role in Kiss of the Spider Woman) there's not much left to say. If those tidbits are enough to hold your attention for almost two hours, then by all means see Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life.
(As a side note, Rivera moves so gingerly throughout the show that you are only getting a pale imitation of her once-sizzling past performances. Rivera is, after all, a woman in her mid-70s.) The show is a hodgepodge of sequences that trace Rivera's life from her early days in ballet school to her professional work as a "gypsy" and then, finally, to being a star. Not just any star, but a Broadway diva. She also won a Kennedy Center honor in her hometown, Washington D.C. The show is peppered with ho-hum original songs and a script that's mildly interesting. The remarkable thing about this show is Rivera herself and her career survival lasting a half-century. In this show, Rivera tackles her star turn with zeal. She displays her sultry voice, her impressive legs and her spot-on timing. Rivera often is accompanied by a small ensemble of dancers. Young and lithe, they do most of the "real" dancing. But even they are reigned in until the middle of the first act. Only when they recreate the "dance at the gym" from West Side Story does the audience get to see any real dancing, even though Rivera is onstage for basically the entire show. Her finest dancing is featured in "All That Jazz" from Chicago. She's still got it, from her hip thrusts to the role of her shoulders. In a series of monologues interspersed between the dancing, Rivera shares a few backstage secrets from her life in the theater. She drops the names of some famous co-stars, such as Gwen Verdon, Elaine Stritch, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dick Van Dyke. But she never delves deeply into her personal life. Her love affairs and marriage (that ended in divorce) are handled delicately. Interestingly, she never introduces her only daughter, Lisa, who is one of the show's three female dancers (no, you can't tell which one it is). Oddly, Rivera never changes costume through the whole show. She wears a black cocktail dress that's both sparkly and gauzy. It's nice, but a few costume changes would have perked things up. Perhaps that statement could be applied to the whole show.
