November 20, 2024: Theatre Yesterday and Today, by Ron Fassler.

In 1984, Liza Minnelli co-starred with Chita Rivera through a rocky six months in The Rink, an original musical by John Kander and Fred Ebb, the team responsible for, among other great scores, Cabaret (1966) and Chicago (1975), and written by Terrence McNally, who would go on later to win Tonys for the books to Kiss of the Spider Woman (1993) and Ragtime (1998). As Minnelli only signed a six-month contract, finding someone to take over for her was always going to be a tough assignment. In fact, in the course of her career, no one had ever replaced Minnelli in anything before. Her first outing, Flora, the Red Menace (1965) closed too quickly and The Act (1977), written for her specifically, had no point in continuing without her. Few choices were availalbe at the time for those at her level of stardom and accomplishments. And the fact the show was even still running six months after such poor reviews was testimony to Minnelli’s drawing power (it didn’t hurt she was co-starring with the beloved Chita Rivera). The job of replacing Minnelli fell to Stockard Channing, a terrific actress who, though not really known for musicals, certainly had enough credits on her resume to merit it, though in the end, her run turned out to be very brief.

Here’s the story.

The Rink began its life on a smaller scale when it was first slated for off-Broadway with a book by Albert Innaurato (Gemini) under the direction of theatre legend, Arthur Laurents, who went back with Rivera as far as 1957’s West Side Story. The project was mostly scrapped with Laurents and Innaurato parting ways with it. McNally was brought on board to write a whole new script and the new director was A.J. Antoon who, in 1973, won a Best Director Tony Award for That Championship Season. In a rare turn of events, he was nominated against himself that year due to his ingenious staging of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, another highlight of the 1972-73 season. Sadly, Antoon died eight years after The Rink, a victim of the AIDS epidemic.

The Rink was always written with Chita Rivera in mind, a favorite of Kander and Ebb's, but not Minnelli (though she too was a favorite). As theatre journalist Harry Haun reported, “The Rink may have been erected to Chita Rivera specifications, but the late-blooming notion of Liza for the daughter role was strictly creative afterthought.” In 1984, when the two longtime friends were having lunch together, Liza asked if the role of the daughter had been cast. “I wanted to work with Chita again,” she said. I wanted to work with somebody on a stage instead of carrying around a vehicle. When you’re doing concerts, even if you have twelve musicians who are right with you in everything, you’re still alone out there. There’s no give and take. Working with Chita—I mean, what we get out of each other is extraordinary.”

Here's a bit of the pair singing at the 1984 Tonys. It’s a little blurry, but hey—enjoy it anyway:

Rivera played Anna Antonelli, an Italian-American woman who has raised her only daughter, Angel, by herself while running a run-down roller rink in Coney Island, now in its last days. Upon learning the structure is about to destroyed, Angel returns to see it one last time and, perhaps, form a reproachment with her mom. The rest of the men (and women) in the show are played by a troupe of guys—all proficient roller skaters—many of whom in the original cast went on to greater things. Among them, Jason Alexander (Tony Award winner for Jerome Robbins’ Broadway and, of course, George on Seinfeld), Rob Marshall, theatre and film director and winner of the Directors Guild honor for the 2000 film version of Chicago, and Scott Ellis, Tony-nominated for Best Director nine (!) times since his Broadway debut helming She Loves Me (1993). Broadway stalwarts Ronn Carroll, Mel Johnson, Jr., Scott Holmes and Frank Mastrocolo rounded out the cast as well as a stray “Little Girl” (Kim Hauser) who weaved in and out of the proceedings and would be identified late in the show as Angel’s daughter.

It opened cold in New York without the benefit of an out of town run, though it did have a workshop production. When it opened, it was pretty much torn apart by the critics. And though a critical and commercial disappointment, Rivera and Minnelli gave it their all. One of its problems was that audiences came hoping to see Liza in glamorous Halston outfits, but as Angel she was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. Legendary costume designer Theoni V. Aldredge had to step aside and allow Halston to construct two sequin dresses for Minnelli because, as Chita Rivera put it, “[fans] were disappointed to see Liza in overalls.” During the run, Minnelli had many issues she eventually succumbed to that led to leaving two weeks before her scheduled departure in order to check into the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, California.

Already in rehearsals as her replacement was Stockard Channing, a great actress but hardly a powerhouse performer like Minnelli. Yes, she’d done musicals, but her singular talents have always been best served in comedies and dramas. The performances she gave in Joe Egg (1985), for which she won the Tony, The House of Blue Leaves (1986) and It’s Only a Play (2014) were, in a word, extraordinary. In the later play as a wealthy Broadway benefactor, it was a marvel to see her wordlessly achieve three distinct and separate laughs from the audience on just three turns of her head. In Six Degrees of Separation, her creation of Ouisa Kittredge was infallible and she was given the rare gift to a Broadway actress: repeating the role on film over any number of bigger stars vying for such a juicy part.

Caught off-guard by Minnelli’s sudden exit, Channing wasn’t ready to go on just yet and Mary Testa stepped in. This was early in the career of the now thrice Tony-nominated veteran. In fact, she hadn’t been with the show long, being a replacement herself for Lenora Nemetz, who, at different times, had stood by for both Chita Rivera and Gwen Verdon during the run of the original Chicago. In truth, at thirty-eight and forty respectively, both Minnelli and Channing were a bit mature for April. Testa, at twenty-eight, might have made a better choice artistically if the box office wasn’t an issue.

“It’s a great score,” Testa has said about The Rink. “You cannot lose with Kander and Ebb. Fred was hilarious and a doll and John is the loveliest, loveliest man on the planet. He is divine. Both of them, their work is exquisite . . . There are some incredible things in that score.”

Here’s Mary Testa singing “Colored Lights,” the show’s opening song, many years later (it begins at the :50 second mark). It’s long, but stay with it. It’s worth it:

By the way, I was always struck by how the poster art for The Rink bared such a striking resemblance to the art for a Cyrano de Bergerac which was done only a year prior in London. Coincidence? I’m guessing no.

Looking back on The Rink years later, Stockard Channing was wistful about it: “I wasn’t in it very long, and they had to close. I was devastated. I said, ‘My God, you’d think I’ve been in this thing for years!’ But I absolutely loved it, and I was very disappointed that it couldn’t continue. But I had to prepare for it just as much, even though I wasn’t in it very long. I think it closed in August, which is that deadly time of year.”

Her memory is correct. The Rink died in the dog days of August after six months on Broadway. Channing’s apparitions as Angel lasted twenty-four performances.

Ron Fassler is the author of Up in the Cheap Seats: An Historical Memoir of Broadway and the forthcoming The Show Goes On: Broadway Hirings, Firings and Replacements. For news and "Theatre Yesterday and Today" columns when they break, please hit the FOLLOW button.