High Flying, Adored

As the perennial Peter Pan, Cathy Rigby won’t grow up — but her children are quickly approaching adulthood. Her oldest daughter will be getting married next summer, and her youngest daughter was having all four of her wisdom teeth extracted around the time of our recent interview. We even had to postpone our talk one day because Rigby had her own dental emergency. “Life goes on — even when you’re in Neverland,” she observes.

This begs the question: Is the 52-year-old actress a little long in the tooth to still be playing the role of a young boy? All signs point to “no” as Rigby continues to wow audiences on her farewell tour of the musical Peter Pan, which you can catch at the Theater at Madison Square Garden through December 30. When will the tour end? It’s hard to tell: There are more than 15 post-New York stops currently listed through Summer 2006, and the presenters are thinking of adding some engagements in Asia.

Rigby has performed the role more than 2,700 times, so it’s not surprising the she answers without missing a beat when asked why she loves playing Peter. “For two hours every night, I get to relive childhood and whatever goes with it — the mischief, the fun, and the joy,” she says. “When my youngest daughter was nine, she said, ‘Mommy, when I grow up, I want to be a boy just like you!’ But the show is not all fluff; it’s about a little boy who has a huge emotional range. One of the most interesting things about it is that kids don’t edit anything. They’re spontaneous, and it’s pretty exciting to play that. Plus, you get to fly!”

As many people know, Rigby had an exceptional childhood. She started taking ballet lessons when she was seven years old and began training in gymnastics two years later. She would practice six to eight hours a day, six days a week. At age 15, she competed in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, and by the time she retired from the sport at 19, she had become the first American woman ever to win a silver medal in gymnastics.

Says Rigby now, “I think the toughest part was the politics of subjective sports, the actual competition, where you’re only as good as your last meet.” She compares that to the theater, where one has to continually impress the critics. “I probably had more passion when I started gymnastics — I lived and breathed the sport — but with theater, I’ve had more longevity and enjoyed the process more,” she remarks.

However many dates may be added, the Peter Pan tour is certainly winding down, and Rigby plans to spend her final performance trying not to cry. “I’m not really thinking about it yet, because that would be hard,” she says. “I never think about the end of something; I just move on to the next thing.” When the tour is over, she plans to take a much-deserved rest before embarking on her next theatrical endeavor; she’s interested in both straight plays and musicals, and she has her own production company, McCoy Rigby Entertainment. Whatever she moves on to, “Peter Pan will always be with me. I have it in my heart. It will be sad to not do the role after this — but I’ve had the gift of playing it, so I can’t complain.”