A mostly sure-footed musical biography

Onstage at the Old Globe, veteran Broadway star Chita Rivera is locked into a depiction of her failed marriage to dancer Tony Mordente that makes her seem miscast in her own life story.

She looks decidedly uncomfortable performing the twisty tango steps assigned by director-choreographer Graciela Daniele. The vintage ballad selected to express her feelings (“More Than You Know”) doesn’t suit her voice -- and the confessional text written by playwright Terrence McNally sounds at once trite and overblown. There’s gotta be something better than this.

There is. In another moment or two, “Chita Rivera: The Dancer’s Life,” the new Broadway-bound musical biography, reaches absolute glory -- a sequence in which she describes with rare eloquence and rarer specificity the choreographers who inspired her: Jack Cole, Peter Gennaro, Jerome Robbins and Bob Fosse.

While a silhouetted line of dancers isolates the components of each style, Rivera becomes a born-again Broadway Gypsy, focusing the corps’ skill and energy in small, essential shifts of position that she projects into the eye of God as if awaiting his judgment -- and a standing ovation. Daniele, McNally and musical director Mark Hummel are in perfect sync with her intentions and the result rivals anything she’s ever done.

The rest of the show falls between these extremes, appropriating some familiar storytelling concepts to allow Rivera to perform her favorite show tunes -- including some not associated with her (“Somewhere” from “West Side Story,” for example).

In the new song “A Woman the World Has Never Seen Before,” Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty launch Rivera into a throaty career summary a la “Rose’s Turn” from “Gypsy.” And the use of an empty spotlight to evoke the late Gwen Verdon unintentionally evokes the ballet film “The Red Shoes” as well.

Staged as a series of flashbacks from a 2002 reception at the White House (when Rivera received the Kennedy Center Honor), the whole show plays like an expansion of Judy Garland’s “Born in a Trunk” medley in “A Star Is Born,” with Rivera assuring us that her ascension to the Broadway pantheon really didn’t happen overnight.

“The Producers” parodied both “Rose’s Turn” and “Born in a Trunk,” so your susceptibility to two hours of heady self-celebration probably depends on the number of original cast albums on your shelves. Fewer songs than you might expect are Broadway classics -- many more are irredeemably cheesy: career steppingstones with novelty value, perhaps, but pretty useless otherwise.

At 72, Rivera marks a lot of them and, at best, the effect is something like sitting with her at a piano while she re-explores old sheet music -- intimate and often intriguingly meditative. She explodes into “A Boy Like That” (from “West Side Story”) with all her old vocal power intact -- but ventures only a fragment. To hear the rest, you’ll have to play the record.

She looks great in her spangly black gown, moves with spectacular ease -- except for a few high kicks that define the outer limits of her flexibility -- and has a genius for distilling the splashiest show-dance styles in spare, potent body-haiku.

But it’s the anecdotes that flatten you, revealing an intelligence and sensitivity that deeply convey the versatility, glamour and camaraderie she finds in the word “Gypsy.”

She never worked for George Balanchine, but speaks of him with love and gratitude. Robbins gave her “detail, style and substance ... his [movement] vocabulary was infinite.”

Gennaro was never properly credited for choreographing the gym mambo in “West Side Story” and Fosse taught her stillness, believe it or not.

Sometimes we don’t believe it, sometimes we feel McNally manipulating the facts. (Did Rivera really want to kill herself after Rita Moreno was cast in the film of “West Side Story”? That’s what she says here, but it seems mostly a setup to a punch line and contradicts decades of interview statements.)

No matter: We hang on every word. Rivera doesn’t need that 12-member band on a high platform behind her, or the scrims, screens and mirrors flying in and out -- or even the hardworking performers who pump up the songs and create an energy aura around her in the dances.

All that counts is the powerful connection between the audience and this battle-scarred, self-effacing, indomitably triumphant woman. So whenever the creators of “Chita Rivera: The Dancer’s Life” stay out of her way and let her talk about Broadway dancing, the show becomes an irresistible tribute to something much bigger than any single career: musical theater as a transformative experience on both sides of the footlights.

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‘Chita Rivera: The Dancer’s Life’

Where: Old Globe Theatre, Balboa Park, San Diego

When: 7 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Call for exceptions.

Ends: Oct. 23

Price: $47 to $75.

Contact: (619) 23-GLOBE

Running Time: 2 hours, 5 minutes

with Chita Rivera, Liana Ortiz, Richard Amaro, Cleve Asbury, Lloyd Culbreath, Jasmine Perri, Madeleine Kelly, Malinda Farrington, Edgard Gallardo, Deirdre Goodwin, Richard Montoya, Lainie Sakakura, Alex Sanchez, Allyson Tucker.

Written by Terrence McNally. Directed and choreographed by Graciela Daniele. Arrangements, incidental music and musical direction by Mark Hummel. Scenic design: Loy Arcenas. Costumes: Toni-Leslie James. Lighting Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer. Original songs: Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty. Robbins choreography reproduced by Alan Johnson. Fosse choreography reproduced by Tony Stevens. Production stage manager: Arturo E. Porazzi.