By Harry Haun
06 Oct 2006

McKechnie has been drumbeating the book in a very unusual way, with a little help from her friends. She has been reading passages from her book , then her original co-stars step up to mike and sing their big hits: Harvey Evans and Kurt Peterson do “Waiting Around for the Girls Upstairs” from Follies and Priscilla Lopez does her “What I Did for Love.” Usually Pamela Myers does “Another Hundred People Just Got Off of the Train” from Company, but at the Oct. 6 performance at Lincoln Center’s Barnes & Noble at 7 PM that number will be done by Angel Desai who will do it soon on Broadway in the Company revival, which commences officially Nov. 29 at the Barrymore; it being a John Doyle show, she’ll bring her own piano-player (who co-stars), Matt Castle.

A big one-two emotional punch is built into the final third of the play. One is the friction of exes (Cassie the fallen star and Zach the rising director; Charlotte d'Amboise and Michael Berresse in the revival). Two is a heartbreaking horror story delivered by Paul (Williams in the original, Jason Tam in the revival), a Puerto Rican gay whose parents accidentally collide with him when he’s in Anna May Wong drag. “Only the first paragraph of that monologue was dropped,” said Williams. “It began with a story of him being molested by his cousin, and they thought that was too hard for the times, so they just concentrated on the scene with the parents.” The anecdote runs under ten minutes, but it was enough to get Dante (who was a dancer and not a writer) co-writing credit and, subsequently, a Tony Award.

The Al in the Broadway revival who finishes the sentences of his wife, Kristine, has, off-stage, strayed to the camp of Val. Tony Yazbeck and Jessica Lee Goldyn happily confessed they’re “an item.” She previously played Val in an Ohio production directed by Donna Drake; it got her her Equity card, and now it’s getting her her Broadway debut. Yazbeck, who danced with distinction in the chorus of four “Encores!” shows, had mom on his mind: “My mother’s the one who supported me through the years and pushed my ass and really got me where I am today. She was here tonight, and I was pretty much in tears during ‘What I Did for Love.’ I’m just happy that I could really give this to her."

Lopez, who looks pretty terrific these days, was frontal about her reaction to the show: “I wish I’d been up there—that’s what it felt like. I’d loved to have done it myself. That means I would have had to be twentysomething years old.” Paging Natasha Katz!

Sheila, the zaftig broad with attitude, is given a contemporary ‘tude by an African-American actress who has set Chicago (the stage show) afire on occasion, Deidre Goodwin. The casting was a puzzlement for the Tony-winning original.

“I thought it was an odd choice,” confessed Bishop. “Everything about Sheila seems to be WASP. It just seems strange for me personally, but that’s the way they wanted it.”

The original Tits-and-Ass girl, Pamela Blair, hasn’t lost allure over the years. To understate, she’s still a stunner—and, when I encountered her at the party, she was brushing away a sentimental tear not related to A Chorus Line—in fact, 180 percent not related to A Chorus Line. Someone had just complimented her on her performance of the ill-fated Mae in Of Mice and Men—a play she was going to the Kennedy Center with when the call to A Chorus Line came along. “After I did A Chorus Line, I couldn’t do plays. I couldn’t get auditions for straight plays. I became labeled this sexy, cute, perky Broadway baby. But one of the things that I’ve learned in life is that you need to be grateful for whatever comes your way, and everything happens for a reason—or so I choose to believe tonight.”

She is now a massage therapist—not a natural outgrowth of that show. “Would you like for me to work on your scapula to prove it?”

Did I say “What’s a scapula?” or did I say “Yes”?