Chita Stays in Character : Rivera’s cabaret act sums up a career’s worth of meaty roles in some fabled Broadway musicals--and is short on self-serving chatter

Chita Rivera’s cabaret act is autobiographical in that it includes selections from the roles that gave her a revered place in musical theater lore--Anita in “West Side Story,” Rosie Grant in “Bye Bye Birdie” and Velma Kelly in “Chicago.”

But the autobiographical nature of the show ends there. “I know there are a lot of performers who can get out on stage and talk about their lives and all the things they have done. But that is not for Chita,” said Rivera, 58, relaxing in her hotel room near the Westwood Playhouse, where “Chita” opens Wednesday and plays through Dec. 1.

Rivera, still trim and lithe more than 40 years after she first stepped on a Broadway stage, laughed and shook her head.

“There is a T-shirt that says, ‘Shut Up and Dance!’ and that sounds right to me. The stage is where you perform, not talk about yourself.”

To fill in a few of the autobiographical details: Rivera was born to a musician and a government clerk in Washington and as a teen-ager won a scholarship to study at George Balanchine’s School of American Ballet in New York. She first danced on Broadway in 1950 in the chorus of “Guys and Dolls.”

Her big break came two years later when she accompanied a nervous girlfriend to an audition for a featured dance role in the national touring company of “Call Me Madam.” In the time-honored tradition of Broadway, Rivera got the role instead.

The choreographer of that show was Jerome Robbins, who in 1955 cast her in “West Side Story” as the fiery Anita.

Rivera went on to critical acclaim not only in musicals but also in productions of plays such as Garson Kanin’s “Born Yesterday” in 1972 and Oliver Hailey’s “Father’s Day” in 1974.

She did do a good deal of television in the early 1970s--including a regular role in the short-lived “The New Dick Van Dyke Show”--when she was living in Los Angeles because she thought this a better city than New York in which to raise her only child, Lisa Mordente.

Mordente, an actress and dancer, is overseeing the dance numbers in “Chita.” (Her father, Tony, and Rivera, who married while they were in “West Side Story,” divorced in 1966.)

Rivera returned to New York in late 1974 to start rehearsals for “Chicago,” which was being directed by Bob Fosse and choreographed by Ron Field, with songs by John Kander and Fred Ebb.

“We were in the first week of rehearsals for ‘Chicago’ when Bobby had his first heart attack,” Rivera said. While the director recovered, the show was postponed.

“Suddenly I had nothing to do,” Rivera said. “Fred and Ron came to me and said, ‘Hey, let’s put on a show.’ It was like one of those things that happen in a June Allyson movie.”

Rivera initially was not crazy about the idea. She had done a cabaret act about eight years before in a resort hotel in Puerto Rico, but it had not been an entirely enjoyable experience.

“I had some trouble going out there and just being Chita,” she said, “not have a role to fit myself into. I think the show went fine, but I never felt comfortable.”

But when “Chicago” was postponed, Rivera, who had moved back to New York to do the show, was in a tough spot.

“She had moved here, rented an apartment full of furniture and was dead broke,” said Ebb, who is best known as the lyricist for “Cabaret,” as well as the films “Funny Lady” and “New York, New York.”

“I was trying to think of something to give her for Christmas, something that would have helped her out with money. But you can’t just give your best friend a check, she never would have taken it.

“I decided to write her an act.”

Field came on board to stage it and together they quickly sketched out an evening of the songs from the famous shows Rivera had been in. She had also been in a number of shows they could easily leave out of the revue.

There was “Zenda,” an adaptation of “The Prisoner of Zenda” with Alfred Drake that played San Francisco and the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in 1969 before it died quietly. “I don’t think we had to worry about anybody yelling ‘Sing something from “Zenda” ’ up at me,” Rivera said.

She had also done another musical that died after its tryout in Los Angeles, Meredith Willson’s 1969 epic about Columbus, “1491.”

“Oh, that one was really bad,” Rivera said with a laugh.

Ebb also created some specialty material for her, including a spoof of “La Bamba.”

“A club act is not a form I actually love to work in,” Ebb said. “I would only write one for someone I love and know very well.”

He had previously written an act for his old friend Liza Minnelli and later did one for Joel Grey.

“These shows will not work unless they are geared directly to the person doing them. You can’t just come up with a list of songs to sing.”

Ebb convinced the owner of an Upper Westside gay bar with a small stage to book the show, and he recruited a couple of dancers to back her. “I went out and bought them matching shirts and pants, and that was their costume,” Ebb said. “They wore their own shoes.”

The act opened in January, 1975, and almost immediately became a hit. “It was the kind of show in a little place that New Yorkers love to discover,” Rivera said.

“I had heard about acts getting discovered and then everyone has to see them, but I had never been involved in one,” Ebb said. “It was a sensation.”

A few months later the act traveled to Los Angeles where it played the Backlot room at the Studio One disco. In the opening night audience were Minnelli, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly.

“Chicago” finally opened in June, 1975, giving Rivera another signature song--”All That Jazz”--and she continued to do updated versions of the act around the country when she was not appearing in new musicals or revivals.

The last few years have not been good for new musicals for her. A show called “Gold Diggers,” with music from the 1930s, folded just before rehearsals were about to begin in 1990 because of money problems. A sequel to “Sugar Babies” with Jerry Lewis and Rip Taylor, planned for the summer of 1991, also failed to pan out.

Indeed, the last new show she was in was “Jerry’s Girls,” a revue that opened on Broadway in 1985.

But on some nights at the Westwood Playhouse, she may use, as an encore, a new song. It’s one Kander and Ebb have written for a new musical adaptation of the film “Kiss of the Spider Woman.” It is set to go into rehearsal in April in Toronto with Rivera as the title character and Hal Prince directing. (An earlier production of the show in upstate New York was a flop with critics, but Ebb said it has been substantially rewritten).

“It’s a good time for Chita to get rediscovered again,” Ebb said. “People don’t see her for a few years in a show and then it’s ‘my God, isn’t she wonderful’ all over again.”