And honor it, she did — with a splendid, spirited portrayal of Lizzie Curry, an unloved (but looking) spinster who is brought to full womanly bloom by an itinerant, water-witching conman in the parched Panhandle of 1936. It's a performance full of spunk, spine and unexpected high-humor — one that seriously rivals Christine Ebersole's magnificent performance(s) of the Beale belles of Grey Gardens. Some first-nighters, in fact, were saying McDonald had just snatched the Tony away from Ebersole right at the finish line.

Not only did the work on stage speak for itself, the tragic subtext off stage came over loud and clear as well. Eleven days earlier, she had lost her dad, Stanley McDonald Jr., in a plane crash north of Sacramento. She took Wednesday and Thursday of last week off for his Fresno funeral and was back in the show by Friday, willing her way through six more days of previews and critics' performances leading up to the end-of-season opening night.

Such is the stuff of the-show-must-go-on mythology, but stars are rarely called on it in such a public and personal manner, and McDonald performed the myth heroically.

Prolonged applause greeted her startling entrance, bursting through a rickety screen-door to surprise her stage father (John Cullum) and two bros (Chris Butler and Bobby Steggert). There was more applause, earned and enthusiastic — and the inevitable standing ovation — at the curtain call after the rains came and Lizzie could see clearly a likely spouse in her sudden field of suitors (scoundrel Steve Kazee or sheriff Christopher Innvar).

McDonald arrived fashionably late, looking very much The Star in a lovely white gown, and gamely, graciously endured the glad-handing that was coming at her from all sides.

Lizzie was a role she had obviously enjoyed working on. "I had a blast," she found herself saying, without really connecting with the words. There was no joy in her voice. "But, you know, it's weird circumstances." She attempted a smile. "The show keeps me going."

(Incidentally or not so incidentally, the last sentence in her Playbill bio dedicates "this performance to the memory of Lovette George," the Musical of Musicals actress and a dear friend who had co-starred with McDonald in Carousel and Marie Christine and who designed the necklace she wore when she won her Tony — No. 4 — for A Raisin in the Sun.)

Lonny Price, who directed McDonald in some Sondheims at Ravinia (Passion and Anyone Can Whistle), professed no surprise at her flair for physical comedy — and took no credit for it, either. "Nobody knows she's a spectacular comedienne," he declared, not at all inaccurately. "She doesn't need a lot of help from me in that department. She's totally original. We investigated the role in a new way, and her Lizzie's unlike anybody else's."

Jones, the 110 lyricist who is playing an actor practically that old in his other show in town (The Fantasticks), greeted McDonald with warm words — "a memorable night."

To the press, he trumpeted with proper pride, "Isn't it a lovely production? I've seen a lot of productions of this show in the past few years, and this one is by far the best of them."

On a serious note, he said Schmidt, his composing partner who has retired to Texas, "had another operation yesterday, for an aneurysm. He's in stable condition but in intensive care in a Houston hospital. We'll know tomorrow more. I think he's going to be okay."

Orchestrator Jonathan Tunick, a busy man these days (LoveMusik last week, Stairway to Paradise for Encores! this week), somehow found the time for 110, too. "All the work I didn't get in the '90s, I got this year," he cracked. "I never saw the original show, but, when I was a summer-stock conductor in the '60s, I conducted 110 in the Shade in Charlotte, NC with Dorothy Collins as Lizzie and the young David Carradine as Starbuck. That's how I met Dorothy. We were already old friends when we did Follies."

McDonald's spellbinding Starbuck, Kazee, is a recent Spamalot escapee — hence, Mike Nichols at the opening but not the party (wife Diane Sawyer is reportedly an early riser).

"Starbuck is an interesting role because I think a lot of people have their own sort of feelings about how it should be played," Kazee contended. "I think that the choices we made were really far away from that, and I actually like that. I like pushing the boundary and going against the norm. He's groundsier — we try to bring that out as much as possible.

"This is an amazing group of actors to be up there with. When you're on the stage with Audra, John Cullum and Chris Innvar — I'm so proud of our company and our show."

Cullum is tilling some familiar character turf with the Panhandle patriarch he plays here. H.C. Curry is a country cousin to his Tony-winning Shenandoah dad with the Tevye travail of an unmarriable, youngish old maid. "Yeah, I feel very comfortable in this show," he admitted. "I love my role. It's like drawing on my own family — my uncles and my dad."

His favorite scenes, shades of Shenandoah, are his clashes with Butler, his headstrong first-born. "I like that development of my relationship between me and my older son because it has a lot of fire and starch to it. It looks as if we don't love each other, but we do. It's a tough-love kind of thing. And I love working with Audra and with Bobby Steggert, the young kid. He knows just what he's doing. He's got a career ahead of him."

Both offsprings — Butler and Steggert — are making their Broadway debuts with this show.

Butler has light musical duties and comes out forcefully in the dramatic scenes as the hard-nosed and critically crippling Noah Curry. "I usually find myself in straight plays," he confessed. "I came out from L.A. That's where I'm based. I've done a lot of West Coast theatre and most of the one-hour television dramas — 'Without a Trace' and such." Continued...