Theater Jones
Carpenter Performance Hall
3333 North MacArthur Blvd.
Irving, TX 75062
972-252-2787
Runtime: One hour, 15 minutes with no intermission
Some stage actresses must spend their careers appearing in dream roles and working with legendary artists so that they can tell these stories later in a memoir revue. Count Donna McKechnie among the ranks who have earned such a privilege.
Her show Gypsy In My Soul opened a two-night stint for Irving Lyric's Stage Friday. It was short, sweet and packed with goodies, not so much from the stories—although there's a priceless bit about a nightly backstage chat with Ann Miller during a New Jersey run of Follies—but from the songs.
McKechnie, wearing a flowing red gown and a perky smile, is best known for winning a Tony as the original Cassie in A Chorus Line. But she has played many other plum roles during her career, including Charity in Sweet Charity and Mama Rose in Gypsy. Songs from those two shows, "Where Am I Going?" and "Some People," were among the highlights.
But even those numbers couldn't match her warm, inviting vocals on the Gershwins' "But Not For Me" (from Girl Crazy) and Rodgers and Hart's "I Didn't Know What Time It Was" (from Too Many Girls), or the glorious belt on Bacharach's "A House Is Not a Home." She even had a little fun with the cutesy "Turkey Lurkey Time" (from Promises, Promises) and Sondheim's "You Could Drive a Person Crazy" (Company), in which she also sang the doo-doo-doo-doos of that song's two other parts. Fort Worth native Eugene Gwozdz did his usual fantastic job as music director.
Of course she had to close with her big A Chorus Line moment, "The Music and the Mirror." Instead of the giant mirror onstage, there was a swirling mirrorball—many more surfaces to reflect the bounty of stories from a Broadway singer and dancer's career.
TheaterJones interviewed McKechnie on Thursday, and a video from that session is above.
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