Chita Rivera Heads The Fine Cast Of 'The Visit'

Revenge is sweet, but how amenable is it to song and dance?

Well, Sweeney Todd, who swung a mean razor, certainly was comfortable with a tune or two while slicing throats. And now we have Claire Zachanassian, no slouch either in the retribution department. Only she has other people do her dirty work.

Claire, the richest woman in the world, is the out-for-blood leading lady in "The Visit," an ambitious, atmospheric and, for the most part, satisfying musical version of Friedrich Duerrenmatt's dark morality tale of greed. It's a greed prompted by love lost, found _and then paid for with the ultimate sacrifice.

And when portrayed by the marvelous Chita Rivera, this stylish, sardonic woman turns out to be a mesmerizing creature capable of murder. Her plan: She offers a destitute Swiss village economic salvation _ 10 billion marks worth _ in exchange for the life of a man (George Hearn) who spurned her years ago.

Rivera is a physical actress, and it's tempting fate _ not to mention an audience's anticipation _ to have her play an imperious dowager with an artificial leg. It will limit her dancing, dancing we've come to expect from a performer who appeared in the legendary, original "West Side Story." Yet even Rivera's immobility is striking as, cane in hand, she slowly stalks the stage at the Signature Theatre, where a reworked production of "The Visit" is on view through June 22.

Her minimal movement is fascinating to watch, particularly in a big second-act dance number for the star and several men called "The One-Legged Tango," choreographed with flair by Ann Reinking.

It's one of the more intoxicating songs by John Kander (music) and Fred Ebb (lyrics), the team that gave us scores for "Cabaret," "Chicago" and Rivera's own "Kiss of the Spider Woman," among others. Ebb died in 2004, nearly three years after the musical's world premiere at Chicago's Goodman Theatre. Kander's often haunting melodies have a Mittel-Europa feel, while Ebb's lyrics are always intelligent, frequently witty and a reminder that putting the right words to the right music is an exacting, difficult task. And one that Ebb accomplished with remarkable ease.

Hearn is in great voice, but then he is a big, dramatic singer who can handle the excess of emotion that permeates his character _ Claire's eventually willing sacrificial lamb. But then the other townspeople are vocally robust, too, particularly Mark Jacoby as the obsequious mayor and Jeremy Webb as a schoolmaster who has doubts about the proposed killing.

Duerrenmatt's bitter brew of a play, seen on Broadway in 1958 with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, has been adapted by Terrence McNally. One of the odd things about the musical is that it accentuates the reblossoming of the love between Claire and her long-ago paramour. Yet she still wants him murdered _ even as visions of their romantic past, portrayed by D.B. Bonds and Mary Ann Lamb, float through the story.

The Signature's highly theatrical production is directed, like the Goodman's, by Frank Galati. He has assembled a superb design team headed by Derek McLane, whose spare, wooden setting features a series of doors, dappled in ghostly light by Howell Binkley. The lighting lends an eerie, spectral presence to the proceedings. It's almost as creepy as Claire's entourage, which includes a cadaverous butler, two muscle-bound servants and a pair of eunuchs wearing rose-colored glasses _ distant cousins, it seems, of the master of ceremonies in "Cabaret."

"The Visit" is part of the Signature's current celebration of Kander and Ebb. Playing at its smaller Ark Theatre (through Sunday only) is a reworked version of a lesser-known effort from the songwriting team _ "The Happy Time."

The show, first seen on Broadway 40 years ago, is a bittersweet memory musical: reprobate son, a photographer, returns home to his contentious family in French Canada. He stirs up things with his life-loving fther, stuffy, bourgeois brothers and impressionable young nephew before realizing it's awfully hard to go home again.

Quite a departure stylistically from "The Visit." Yet both shows demonstrate the remarkable musical-theater acumen found in the words and music of John Kander and Fred Ebb.