Ava Cronin (CFA’26) (left) as Anna Antonelli, owner of a dilapidated roller skating rink, and Charlotte Compo (CFA’26) as her daughter, Angel, during a rehearsal for The Rink.

Music

School of Theatre Presents Tony-Nominated Musical The Rink at Booth Theatre

Show features a newly restored book and orchestration

This article was originally published in BU Today on November 21, 2024. By Sujena Soumyanath (COM’25). Video by Nicolas Rocca. Photos by Jake Belcher

It’s all part of the set for the College of Fine Arts School of Theatre fall show, a revival of the rarely produced John Kander/Fred Ebb Broadway musical The Rink. The actors don roller skates through much of the musical, which runs November 22 through December 8. One of Broadway’s most successful songwriting teams, Kander and Ebb are best known for writing the music and lyrics to the Broadway hits Cabaret and Chicago. The Rink first opened on Broadway in 1984, starring legendary actors Chita Rivera and Liza Minnelli. 

The musical is the story of Anna Antonelli, whose Coney Island roller skating rink is about to be demolished. When her estranged daughter, Angel, returns after several years, the two are forced to confront decades of memories, trying to understand their past, present, and future. 

Director Gregg Wiggans (CFA‘25) says that what makes this revival particularly noteworthy is that it features a newly restored book and orchestrations. “That alone feels like a huge feat,” he says. 

Although set decades before iPhones, AI, or self-driving cars, many aspects of the musical resonate today. Wiggans, who is earning an MFA in directing, points to the rising costs of bread and gas, the threat of political corruption, and more broadly, the realization that one’s parents and children are individuals and have their own idiosyncrasies. 

“All these threads feel like they’re worthy of investigation again,” he says. 

The past four decades have been less than kind to The Rink. Though Rivera won a Tony award for her performance and Minnelli was nominated as well, many critics at the time didn’t much care for the show (from the New York Times: a “turgid, sour new musical”). In the years since, numerous directors and theater companies reorchestrated the musical, switched up certain scenes, and even cut some out all together. 

But Wiggans, who is directing the show as part of his thesis project, says he wanted to recapture The Rink’s original sound, reasoning that if modern musical theater has expanded to include pop musicals and extravagant spectacles, who’s to say today’s audiences wouldn’t appreciate The Rink in its 1984 form? 

So he and show music director Harry Castle, a CFA assistant professor of musical theater, collaborated with Kander’s team (the composer is now 97) and Concord Theatricals, which licenses Kander and Ebb’s work, to restore the soundtrack to its original version. 

The result is a soundtrack that is “quintessential Broadway,” Wiggans says. Brassy, bold sounds paired with Coney Island influences and hints of synth pop speak to the original conception of the musical. 

“Everything I could dream it to be”

For BU students acting in the production, reviving a classic soundtrack presents a particularly exciting opportunity. Ava Cronin (CFA’26), who plays Anna, says she’s always loved Kander and Ebb’s music and getting cast in the show has been an opportunity to grow as an actor. 

“Especially as an acting major, it’s not super common to get to do super Broadway-esque musical shows,” she says. “Getting to experience that this year has been the greatest gift… This role is truly everything I could dream it to be.” 

To tackle a musical that moves through multiple decades (the show is set in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s), the cast has put in numerous hours of work—both inside and outside the theater—since rehearsals began in October. 

Charlotte Compo (CFA’26), who plays Angel, recalls the moment she and Cronin performed together during callbacks. “The second I did it with Ava, it was just so easy,” she says. “I just knew leaving that room that it would probably be the two of us, because we just had such a good starting ground.”

The two have been close friends since freshman year and during the following weeks, they dove into their roles. Cronin describes watching documentaries about Coney Island, like Under The Roller Coaster. For Compo, whose family hails from New York, her research also led her to ask relatives about growing up in Queens (Coney Island is in nearby Brooklyn). 

A cultural facilitator was also on hand to help the cast understand how people would have interacted in those three decades, Wiggans says. And to brush up their skating skills for the performance, actors took lessons at local rink Chez-Vous. 

A few days before opening night, the Booth Theater was buzzing with the sound of construction as roller skating sound effects began to play. It was hard to determine where the stage ended and the audience seating began. In fact, Wiggans says, actors will move from the center of the theater to other areas above and around the rink, giving the audience the sensation of being immersed in a rink. 

“By putting the audience in the story in such a physical way,” he says, “it also implies that you’re a part of this narrative somehow.” 

River Hayes (CFA’25), the show’s artistic producer, says The Rink provides a unique opportunity to engage with a broader community and bring the conversation beyond the Booth Theatre. “It’s not just the School of Theatre,” Hayes says. “Boston University, Boston, and this entire community are hearing this music and telling this story.”

Central to the plot is the universal nature of Anna’s and Angel’s fight for a brighter future. And it’s precisely this sense of hope that Hayes wants audiences to take away from the show. 

“There’s something about that idea of possibility that’s in every word and every ounce of this production, that I think is worth fighting for,” Hayes says.