Donna McKechnie’s been on the scene long enough to recall making George Abbott — the legendary director of the original “Damn Yankees” — laugh. But even at 72, the Tony-winning star of “A Chorus Line” exudes the youthful enthusiasm of an ingénue in her new show at 54 Below, “Same Place, Another Time.”
Trading on both former disco Studio 54’s glamorous past and the fact that she once lived on the very same street, the evening weaves together ’70s-era songs and standards like Irving Berlin’s “Better Luck Next Time” and “I Got Lost in His Arms.” That last reflects a series of checkered romantic relationships, about which she’s otherwise discreet.
“It was all sex, drugs and rock and roll,” she says of the ’70s. “It was a more innocent time.”
The evening’s hybrid tone is set in the opening number, a jaunty medley of Van McCoy’s disco classic “The Hustle” and Rodgers and Hart’s “Where or When,” with a bit of “Native New Yorker” thrown into the mix.
Like the dancer she was, she delivers her songs with a wonderful choreographed physicality, her arms and hands moving as gracefully as her legs once did before they succumbed to arthritis.
“The two most painful things in my life are arthritis and divorce,” she jokes. Watching her reprise several of her iconic “Chorus Line” steps as she sang Portia Nelson’s amusing “Hate/Love New York” provided a welcome blast of nostalgia.
So did her brief account of the show’s creation by Michael Bennett, who used her story as the inspiration for her character, Cassie.
Rather than sing her signature number, “The Music and the Mirror,” she paid tribute to late composer Marvin Hamlisch with a moving rendition of “At the Ballet.” Though she didn’t perform that number in the show, she noted, it was as much her story as any of the dancers’.
Backed by a terrific five-piece band led by Emmy winner John McDaniel (“The Rosie O’Donnell Show”), McKechnie deals with the passage of time with a winning humor and maturity. It’s beautifully summed up in her closing number, Stephen Sondheim’s “With So Little To Be Sure Of”:
“Crazy business this, this life we live in/Can’t complain about the time we’re given/With so little to be sure of in this world.”