Liza and the Rink

[NYC4Life]

Posted: 6/16/06 at 9:01pm

Can someone tell me ehy Liza left The Rink so early. I searched but could not find anything. Was the show a hit?
Updated On: 6/16/06 at 09:01 PM

[morosco]

Posted: 6/16/06 at 9:04pm

Didn't she leave to go to rehab?

[WickedGeek28]

Posted: 6/16/06 at 9:26pm

Don't Ah Ma' Me!

Ahh the joys of Chita singing that live . . .

[NYC4Life]

Posted: 6/16/06 at 9:41pm

so nobody knows for sure or....

[frontrowcentre2]

Posted: 6/16/06 at 9:45pm

Yes Liza was battling addictions at the time and missing many performances. They replaced her with Stockard Channing who by all reports was excellent in the role but failed to sell tickets. I can't really say how good she was: the show closed about 2 weeks before I arrived in New York in the summer of 1984!

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 6/16/06 at 9:56pm

Yes, she reached a crisis point with her addictions and she had to bow out of the show.

Posted: 6/16/06 at 10:06pm

I saw the show a week or two before Liza left and it was really sad to see her in the condition that she was in. However, I really liked the show and the score. I think it's one of Kander and Ebb's best scores. For those who haven't heard the score, they should give it a listen. The London cast recording is also excellent.

[NYC4Life]

Posted: 6/16/06 at 10:10pm

I wonder how Leslie Uggams and Janet Metz will do.

http://www.playbill.com/news/article/100387.html

[ljay889]

Posted: 6/16/06 at 10:13pm

I also am wondering how that revised version at Cape Cod will be.

The score is pretty good, though I find it far from one of K&E's best.

I would love to hear the score with more modern orchestrations, the syntheized 80's sound just well.. sounds crappy.

[nobodyhome]

Posted: 6/17/06 at 5:27am

Liza left only a week or so before the end of her contract. She had signed for only about five months. I remember because I went to see the show during what was supposed to be her final week, and she was out. As it turned out, she was out the entire week, she had already gone, I believe, to the Betty Ford clinic.

The show got mixed reviews (and that might be a charitable description), with raves for Chita. As a result, it really wasn't a hit and it was Liza's presence, more than Chita's, that kept it running. As a result, it closed shortly after she left.

The night I went I saw Mary Testa go on for Liza. (I think that Lenora Nemetz had been Liza's standby when the show opened, but by this point it was Testa.) It was the first time I'd seen her and I thought she was terrific in the role. Unfortunately, I thought the show itself was pretty much a mess (although the set was spectacular). But the show is loved by some people. The friend I went with loved it and still loves listening to the cast recording.

According to Mandelbaum, Stockard Channing's acting was excellent but her singing was not strong enough.

[frontrowcentre2]

Posted: 6/18/06 at 11:31am

Back when KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN was trying out in Toronto, I did an interview with Kander and Ebb for my radio program. AT that point we only had a demo of a few SPIDER WOMAN songs so I decidied to devote the program to THE RINK and both remained very proud of their work on the show. Kander explained that they had written it with Chita in mind and Liza came into it much later...she wanted to play Angel. Fred Ebb thought that was what hurt the show. Audiences couldn't accept Liza in a role that wasn't flashy and glamourous. She was also a little too strong for the vulnerable Angel.

The script is solid enough and even if the characters are not the most likable or sympathetic, they are real. I suspect in time we will see properly cast revival that will blow everyone away.

[morosco]

Posted: 6/18/06 at 12:12pm

"Audiences couldn't accept Liza in a role that wasn't flashy and glamourous."

Ah...that explains why she took her curtain call in a flashy and glamourous gown that was completely out of synch with the role of Angel. I guess that's what the audience had been wanting for all night long.

[KJisgroovy]

Posted: 6/18/06 at 12:36pm

"The script is solid enough"
It's lame and totally cliched in alot of the scenes that aren't exclusively Angel and Anna.

kmc

[DAME]

Posted: 6/18/06 at 12:55pm

The book could use some updating and tinkering. But what a great score. I saw this production a few times through the run. Chita was sensational. Liza was good but miscast. Stockard Channing could not sing it. And it was one of the first of many times that Jason Alexander would go on to annoy me. i hope it gets a first class revival soon.

Hmm.. Leslie Uggams??? Isn't the character Italian?

[Smaxie]

Posted: 6/18/06 at 1:08pm

I don't know whether the show's failure can be blamed so squarely on the audience's expectations for what they wanted of Liza. She had played downtrodden characters before. There are pleasures to be had with the cast recording, but there were also some truly terrible, cliched and ludicrous moments, both in the book and score. I was actively embarrassed for Chita Rivera having to perform that gang rape ballet at the end of Act One (it wasn't exactly the match for Robbins' choreography for Anita's rape in West Side Story), and some of those songs ("Angel's Rink and Social Center," "Mrs. A." "All the Children in a Row") are not highpoints in the Kander & Ebb canon.

I do remember some nice staging for "After All These Years," (the wreckers tap dancing on bubble wrap), the joyfulness of the title song (on roller skates), the spooky, moody staging for "Colored Lights," Chita and Liza oggling Frank Mastrocola's hot ass for several minutes in "The Apple Doesn't Fall," and of course, the celebrated scenic effect of the entire rink setting disappearing in the finale. That was something. But for the most part, this was a nasty, unpleasant show. The surviving authors would be better off leaving it alone.

Updated On: 6/18/06 at 01:08 PM

[DAME]

Posted: 6/18/06 at 1:54pm

"But for the most part, this was a nasty, unpleasant show. The surviving authors would be better off leaving it alone. "

Well... that is your opinion. With all its faults I loved this show and I am hopeful that there will be a first class revival soon. ( I do agree with you on the rape ballet)

Updated On: 6/18/06 at 01:54 PM

[PalJoey]

Posted: 6/18/06 at 2:22pm

She had an awful lot of ENERGY onstage the night I saw her in the show...and even more afterwards at the old Charlie's on 45th Street.

Those were high-flying days...

[NYC4Life]

Posted: 6/18/06 at 5:15pm

"Hmm.. Leslie Uggams??? Isn't the character Italian? "

Black people can be Italian.

Posted: 6/18/06 at 5:18pm

or is the proper term Afro-Italian?

[EponineAmneris]

Posted: 6/18/06 at 6:28pm

I have an original PLAYBILL from this show.

Interesting thread. I sure wish I had something more to add... This is one of Jason Alexander's first shows, right?

Updated On: 6/18/06 at 06:28 PM

[frontrowcentre2]

Posted: 6/18/06 at 6:58pm

No, Jason Alexander's first B'way show was the original production of MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG in 1981.

I remember waiting for my friend outside the theatre after one of the previews, and Jason came out and was talking to some friends about all of the changes they had ben through. At one point they all wore costumes representing the different eras and they wer scrapped. Numbers were being chnaged, dropped and added...he said that he didn't think they had played two performances exactly the same. I stood there listening to every word while pretending to read my playbill...

[EponineAmneris]

Posted: 6/18/06 at 7:00pm

AWESOME story, frontrowcentre2 Thank you for the info and for sharing your story.

[Jon]

Posted: 6/18/06 at 7:41pm

McNally already updated the book in the late 1990's, taking out all topical references that set the story in a specific time period. The stuff about the father fighting in Korea is gone, the reference to "that peanut farmer in the White House" is gone, and the entire lyric of "All the Children in a Row" is different. It is no longer a hippie anthem, but is now a song about Angel traveling around looking for her dad.

In the new version "the present day" could be 2006, the 90's, the 80's or the 70's.