'The Rink' rolls into Cape Playhouse

John Kander , along with partner Fred Ebb , has created such Broadway hits as ``Cabaret," ``Chicago," and ``Zorba. " But the show that he says he feels most passionate about is one that flopped.

That was ``The Rink." The 1984 show starred Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera (who won a Tony for it) but was not generally well received.

Now the musical, freshly rewritten by Kander and book writer Terrence McNally , is being given a new run at the Cape Playhouse , where it opens Monday. Leslie Uggams and Janet Metz star as a mother and grown daughter who are reunited as the family's roller rink is about to be torn down.

Kander, who spoke by phone from New York, says the show he and Ebb originally envisioned was light years from what it became. ``We started off planning to do a version of `Peer Gynt,' set in Wisconsin," he says.

After a long process, it became the story of an estranged Italian mother and daughter who learn to forgive each other.

``It's quite an emotional piece, more overtly emotional than `Cabaret' or `Chicago,' " says Kander, who wrote the score.

Two aspects of the story excited the team. ``The reality of the two women on the most basic level," he says. ``The other was these five figures we call `The Wreckers.' They're guys hired to tear down the rink, but they're more than that. They perform all the other parts, men and women. They're down to earth, in your face, singing and dancing.

``But when it's all over, we wonder if they were really there or if they were figments of our imagination or if we made them up. I've always been attracted to that kind of ambiguity. We fell in love with them."

In planning the original version, he says, having Rivera play the mother was very much on their minds. But Minnelli came to them and said she really wanted to be in it.

Kander says he asked her why she wanted what was the second lead.

``She said, `Because there's not one spangle in it.' She was quite wonderful in it. But the critics and the public didn't want to see her that way. She was all schlumpy through the show."

Fast forward to today. Now the Rivera role is being played by another Broadway veteran, Uggams.

``Leslie has tremendous warmth and that glorious voice," Kander says. ``Whoever plays Anna had better be a woman with considerable charismatic appeal. She has to be really tough in this piece."

Uggams, who spoke by phone from a rehearsal studio in New York, agrees. ``She's a very strong woman. I seem to, not consciously, but I seem to play women who have a lot of strength. I'm a survivor and Anna is a survivor."

She also thinks it's not a big deal for an African-American actress to be playing an Italian-American. ``I did Maria Callas," she points out. ``And Chita wasn't Italian."

Uggams didn't see the original production, but she took to the musical right away. ``A lot of times when I do a musical the book is fluffy," she says. ``This is a very deep book in a short amount of time. And when I heard the score, I thought, `Wow, why hasn't this been sung more often?' "

``The Rink" runs Monday through July 15 at the Cape Playhouse, Dennis. Tickets: $25-$45. 877-385-3911, 50 8-385-3911, www.capeplayhouse.com.

Actors ' Shakespeare Project's ``King Lear," starring Alvin Epstein, which sold out in Boston last fall, is doing equally well at La MaMa in New York, reports publicity director Marianne Evett. It's gotten mostly positive reviews and a few raves and is sold out through its final performance on Sunday.

A new company, Theatre Omnibus, will present its inaugural production, David Auburn's Pulitzer Prize-winning ``Proof," starring Richard McElvain as the father and Lindsay Flathers as Catherine. Thursday through July 23 at the Black Box Theater, Arsenal Center for the Arts, Watertown. Tickets: Free, with a suggested donation of $15. Information: 978-468-5639 , mcelvain@comcast.net. . . . ``My Yolanda Love," the latest play by Jess Martin, winner of a 2005 Artist Grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, will be presented by Queer Soup at the Boston Playwrights' Theatre Thursday through July 22. Tickets: $15-$20. 866-811-4111, www.queersoup.net. . . . Gloucester Stage Company has added a performance of Wendy Wasserstein's ``The Heidi Chronicles" this Sunday at 1 p.m. Tickets: $35. 978-281-4433. www.gloucesterstage.org.