Half a lifetime ago, Chita Rivera—daughter of a Puerto Rican immigrant—was turned down for a role because some clown of a director declared her “not Latin enough.†This week, at 79, she’s stepping into the revival of The Mystery of Edwin Drood as a nineteenth-century London actress playing an opium-den madam, and not only is nobody batting an eye; she’s the marquee star. “I like her,†she says affectionately of her character, “because she understands and accepts those who belong to the seedy side of life.â€
When Drood was first staged in 1985, Rivera probably wouldn’t have been considered for the role, and you can read that shift as commentary on the gradual opening-up of Broadway casting. But it’s just as surely about Rivera herself, whose singing, dancing—still exceptional despite age and a mid-career car accident that shattered her leg—and onstage charisma long ago busted through any such pigeonholes. The show is a high-concept musical based on Charles Dickens’s unfinished final novel, a murder mystery in which the audience chooses the ending. (Oddly, she didn’t see it in its first incarnation: “I was performing in Jerry’s Girls,†on the same schedule, she explains.) We’d like to suggest that the producers broaden the menu a little: Since it’s Chita, how about a version in which the old broad gets to dance a little?