Andrea McArdle

How rare to attend a concert given by a Broadway star and hear exactly the songs one wants to hear — the artist's signature tunes, other theatre songs featuring great arrangements and a few unexpected delights.

Such was the case last Sunday evening when the ever-youthful Andrea McArdle took to the stage of the intimate Joe's Pub located within the Public Theater. McArdle, whose voice is as pure and clear as when she first strode the boards in the 1977 Tony winner Annie, began the Richard Jay-Alexander-directed evening with a charming, wistful version of that musical's "N.Y.C." From the moment she sang "N.Y.C./ What is it about you?/ You're big/ You're loud. . . ," she had the sold-out crowd in the palm of her hands.

McArdle then fast-forwarded two decades and offered a tune from her most recent Broadway outing, State Fair's "It Might As Well Be Spring." The singer-actress, who has an easy charm onstage, doesn't take herself too seriously: She displayed old headshots featuring a frizzy-haired eighties McArdle and even joked, "I know when you hear the name Stephen Sondheim, the first thought is not 'Andrea McArdle.'" McArdle, however, hoped to change that notion and did extremely well with three Sondheim favorites: a high-voltage rendition of "Everybody Says Don't" that featured a terrific modulation mid-song; a wonderful, slowed-down arrangement of "You Could Drive a Person Crazy"; and a belty rendition of the Follies ballad "Losing My Mind."

McArdle concluded her set with her signature tune "Tomorrow." Her rendition remains as fresh and exciting as ever; in fact, no "Annie" since has come close to the wide-eyed innocence and infectious optimism that McArdle brings to the tune. She returned for one final offering, the Judy Garland standard "Over the Rainbow."

Truth be told, McArdle flubbed a lyric here and there, but she has such an easy-going stage demeanor, one is just happy to be in her warm, engaging presence. (My favorite line of the evening: "I'm the only 40-year-old who would make sense singing 'I'm Still Here.'") Let's hope McArdle, who is equally at home singing theatre classics and pop ballads, makes her New York concert appearances more frequent.

SIX OF ONE

With the news that A Chorus Line is headed back to Broadway comes word of another musical about the lives of talented young performers. Six of One is the tentative title of a new musical in development, co-conceived by Joy director Ben Rimalower.

Six young actresses — Hairspray's Leslie Kritzer, Bare's Natalie Joy Johnson, The Boy From Oz's Stephanie Kurtzuba, Hair's Julie Garnyé, Urinetown's Sheri Sanders and comic Poppi Kramer — are lending their stories in and out of show business to the project, which is in its early stages. Director Rimalower told me earlier in the week, "They're all so loud and so funny and so dominant in personality! Right now, we're developing the show using the Chorus Line model — confessionals and interviews about their experiences as six young actor-singers, who are friends and have to compete for the same parts.

"The next level of this process," explained Rimalower, "is going to be improvs. We hope to have monologues and scenes come out of them. Then, we're doing a presentation for a bunch of songwriters, and eventually we'll do one evening at the Ars Nova Theater, probably in August and September." Continued...