Chita Rivera Returns to Feinstein's

“I won’t dance; don’t ask me!” Chita Rivera sings as she glides up to the small stage at Feinstein’s at Lowes Regency.

Don’t believe her. With approximately five square feet of space to work with, Ms. Rivera rips up every inch of that tiny stage with all the energy, grace and charisma of a woman fifty years her junior. In her most recent outing at Feinstein’s, which features numbers from many of her Broadway hits, she celebrates not only her career, but the best of Broadway and the American Songbook.

Wisely, Ms. Rivera does not take the “And then I did…” route for her musical journey. Filled with fun anecdotes and plenty of humor, the show blends musical theatre standards with jazz and even pop songs to paint its portrait. When she recounts hiring Musical Director Carmel Dean, for example, they recreate their conversation as a variation of “The Telephone Hour” from Bye Bye Birdie. (“How lovely to have a woman MD!” she sings at the end of the Birdie medley.) As in The Dancer’s Life (which was inspired by her first Feinstein's cabaret), she recreates her audition for West Side Story, and uses the story to demonstrate a rising actress’ maturity under the right guidance—in her case, Leonard Bernstein himself offered  motivation. In one emotional arc, she goes from the (intentionally) overblown pathos of “My Man’s Gone Now” to the primal rage of “A Boy Like That” right into the sarcastic humor of “America.”

Like all great actresses, Ms. Rivera can make any given musical moment convey wild joy or deep tragedy. She literally seems unable to stand still when she rips into a medley of “Sweet Happy Life” and “Más Que Nada,” and brings a poignant, plaintive mood to “More Than You Know,” focusing on the emotion behind the lyrics. She brings a bittersweet amusement to Jacques Brel’s “Carousel,” and seems about to cry when she sings Kander & Ebb’s wistful “I Don’t Remember You.” In lesser hands, the moment would be maudlin, but Ms. Rivera adds plenty of starch to the song’s spine, making it a quiet statement of determination as much as loss.

Of course, some of the most famous songs from her career have to be featured, and along with the above-mentioned “America,” Ms. Rivera creates another emotional arc of three songs from Sweet Charity (“Big Spender,” “Something Better Than This” and “Where Am I Going?”). “I got a lotta nerve,” she says with a wink as she strikes the famous Fosse poses. When the famous John Kander intro for “All That Jazz” begins, she delays singing to praise him. “Nobody can write a vamp like John Kander,” she says, smiling at the double meaning of the word. She then grins, and murmurs almost as an aside, “Catherine Zeta-Jones thinks that’s her vamp!” And, again, she dances, with no boys to back her up and only her trio (Carmel Dean on piano, Mary Ann McSweeney on bass and Michael Croiter on drums) to sing along. It’s a magical moment; a perfect bridge between cabaret and musical theatre that is utterly exhilarating and magical. If she has no plans to return to Broadway soon, Feinstein’s at Lowes Regency is a perfect home for Ms. Rivera’s elegant and exciting style.