Boy, Chita Rivera is amazing. I know it's not polite to mention a lady's age but last night at the Wallis Theater in Beverly Hills, every single one of us in the audience was thinking, "She's 85 and she can still sing and dance!" No, not with the vitality and flexibility of when she was in the original West Side Story or Bye Bye Birdie or any of her huge Broadway hits…but even at a reduced capacity, she's still amazing. On the way out, a lady in front of us said, "I'm going to still be tingling tomorrow morning" and I don't know if she is but I sure am.
Broadway historian-accompanist Seth Rudetsky does these shows every so often at the Wallis and perhaps elsewhere. He brings in some legendary diva of the musical theater and it's half-interview, half-performance. Chita answered questions charmingly and amusingly about her career and she sang eight or nine of her tunes from her many stage triumphs, closing with "All That Jazz" and "Nowadays" from Chicago. ("Nowadays" featured a funny, loving impression of her late co-star in that show, Gwen Verdon.) Her sheer energy impressed us all, all the more so when we remembered that she did two performances last evening and we were at the second.
Mr. Rudetsky is also a very fine host and pianist. I said the same thing about him a year ago when he did the same kind of show on the same stage with another pretty talented woman, Audra McDonald. Can't wait to see who he drags there next season.
While we're on the subject of talented folks singing show tunes, I've been too busy 'til now to report on another peachy evening. Last week, I took Amber to the Catalina Jazz Club in Hollywood to see my pal Jason Graae performing with his pal, Liz Callaway. I felt a little inadequate there. The place was packed with performers and I was maybe the only one present who wasn't qualified to get up there and do a number. (We were sitting with Frank Ferrante.)
If you know Graae and Callaway, I don't have to rave about their talents, individually or collectively. If you don't know them…well, you oughta. Jason probably won't be doing a lot of cabaret performances for a while. He joins the National Tour of Wicked when it opens next week in Omaha. Unless he gets his ass fired, he will be in it when it plays Toledo, Toronto, Detroit, Tulsa, San Antonio, Albuquerque, San Diego, Los Angeles and other cities. He is playing, of course, The Wizard but I'm betting that if he's still in it when it gets here they'll have upgraded him to Glinda or Elphaba. Touring schedule here.
I could tell you how good Liz Callaway is but I already showed you back here…and here's a link to a video I posted of Jason in performance. Put these two on the same stage and it was another reason to wake up the next morning still tingling. Audra McDonald, by the way, is performing down at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown L.A. the afternoon of May 20 and there still seem to be cheap tickets available on Goldstar.