THEATER;A Long and Twisting Road Back to Broadway - The New ...

THEATER;A Long and Twisting Road Back to Broadway
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THIS IS WHAT I CARRY with me." Donna McKechnie stands in a Manhattan sublet apartment surrounded by someone else's possessions, cradling a picture frame. In it is a photograph, taken 20 years ago, of her between Michael Bennett and Fred Astaire.
"He had come to see 'A Chorus Line' in L.A. and he took us to dinner at Trader Vic's," she recalled. "I couldn't speak I was so in awe. Then we went back to his house, and when I used the powder room, the initial P was on the hand towels, for Phyllis, his dead wife. This was before he got married again. And I thought: 'He's living in a time warp. He's lonely.' I remember him saying, 'I don't go out much anymore because of all the husbands tapping me on the shoulder asking, 'Will you dance with my wife?'
And when we were leaving, I thought: 'This is terrible. He's going to think I'm just a stupid dancer who can't speak.' We got in the car, and I looked back to wave. There was a porch with a light over it and a circular drive. And when I waved, you know what he did? He went like this." She strikes the classic Fred Astaire pose, a lunge with arms extended. "It was his signature to me saying it's O.K.," she said. "He knew."
It's odd, suddenly, to see her imitate his pose. Here she has been on this rainy afternoon, dressed in an argyle sweater set and slacks, making homey chatter, setting out ice cubes in a bowl. And to see that pose transform this woman who looks like a mom in a cookie commercial into one of the most commanding musical-comedy dancers of our time is jarring. But Donna McKechnie has always been a study in opposites, especially when she dances, her stark physical power contrasting with her little-girl ebullience. The pure line of an artist suffused by the pure ecstasy of Snoopy anticipating his supper.
There is also the enduring offstage dichotomy -- the Cassie Thing. Star, not a star. Famous, but only to other dancers. Acting out her own life onstage, except for the fact that the Cassie character in "A Chorus Line," for which she won a Tony Award in 1976, was never based on her life. The character of Maggie was, but who remembers Maggie? So, even though she never was Cassie, everyone thinks she is.
Maybe it's a way to keep Michael Bennett alive. He was her friend, director, choreographer and, briefly, husband, who died of AIDS in 1987. From the moment they met on the television show "Hullabaloo," she was his premier interpreter. She was not just a Michael Bennett dancer, she was the Michael Bennett dancer. Which helps to answer the whatever-happened-to? question that has plagued her ever since. But more of that later.
This month she has returned to Broadway for the first time since 1987, her final stint in "A Chorus Line." She is co-starring with John Davidson, Kathryn Crosby and Andrea McArdle in Rodgers and Hammerstein's "State Fair," directed by James Hammerstein and Randy Skinner, opening on Wednesday at the Music Box Theater.
Ms. McKechnie plays Emily Arden, a big-band singer and dancer hellbent on getting to New York and becoming a star. While the role is not quite Cassie, there is that same wish behind it, that same yearning for a name in lights. The musical, which was written in 1945 as a film, began touring last summer in Des Moines to coincide with the Iowa State Fair, for which it is named. And in this year of the surprise hit movie "Babe," no one should underestimate the pull of a story that revolves around a farmer's blue-ribbon hopes for his prize pig. "I call it the human-scale show," Ms. McKechnie said. "It lets people feel you're like them or they're like you and they're not alone."
The tour of "State Fair" ended only a month ago, which partly explains why Ms. McKechnie is living in a friend's apartment on the Upper West Side. Her life has truly been that of a gypsy since her marriage to Bennett ended in 1977. Though she continued to live in New York, it was impossible, she recalled, to find work.
"I had a very tough time after the relationship," she said. "I couldn't get an audition for a year. I heard the rumor about Michael blackballing me, but I never thought that was true. It was never personal. None of Michael Bennett's business partners wanted to make him uncomfortable by casting me."
She moved to Los Angeles in 1980, she said, to establish her TVQ, or television quotient, "which meant that if you became a TV star, you could come back to New York and get a Broadway show." While she stayed for 10 years, appearing on sitcoms such as "Family Ties," even coaching the Los Angeles Raiders cheerleaders ("I had a manager who wanted tickets to the games," she said, laughing. "Don't ask"), she ended up touring in musical theater most of that time. "I never stopped working above the title," she said. "I just was not visible in New York. I was better known in London, Paris, Tokyo. I didn't feel I dropped out of sight. But the perception here was that no one could ever find me."
IN 1992 SHE MOVED BACK TO New York, appearing in "Cut the Ribbons," a fast flop. Cast in a leading role in the 1993 Off Broadway "Annie Warbucks," the disappointing sequel to "Annie," her dream of a long run was dashed again. With "State Fair," she hopes to be luckier. She'd like an apartment and a country house. "I miss a yard," she said simply.
It certainly is time for a real home. Ms. McKechnie is 53 years old, dancing in the tradition of Chita Rivera and her all-time idol, Gwen Verdon. In a telephone interview, Ms. Verdon said: "One reason Donna dances so well at her age is that she's an actress-dancer. Margot Fonteyn once said, 'By the time you're old enough to really know how to do it, you're almost too old to do it.' I'm 71, and I can still dance. I can't do a whole number, but I'm terrific for 16 bars. Donna will be the same way. She knows it's not just steps. There's an emotional quality to every dance."
Bob Avian, who was Bennett's co-choreographer on "A Chorus Line," added: "I started with Donna when I started with Michael. After 'Chorus Line,' I worried about all the cast and what would happen to them. But Donna isn't dragged down by the neuroses of being a star. She has no qualms about doing summer stock, tours or nightclubs. She's a survivor.
"When you are a dancer, you are told what to do and you do it. It's part of the discipline. Neil Simon once told Michael that Donna was his secret weapon because she could just do anything. She still can. After all these years, she gets out there and does it."
Ms. McKechnie is not a fan of the spate of "A Chorus Line" books published in the last few years, including those by cast members. "So much agenda goes on with those things it turns me off," she said, sipping her mineral water. "The sibling rivalry in that show was horrendous."
Maybe, but she had the advantage with Bennett. She nodded. "I never had anyone take care of me before Michael," she said slowly. "There's a place to get confused when you work, where real intimacies happen. That's where we felt comfortable, putting personal stuff on the shelf. I was the instrument, the interpreter of his design. I was very spoiled by it. So, I won't do my own book about it. I'm going to do a musical of my life instead."
THAT LIFE BEGAN IN Pontiac, Mich., one of three children of a self-employed tool-and-die machinist. The family moved often. At 16, Ms. McKechnie ran away to New York to become a dancer, never graduating from high school. "I don't regret it," she said calmly. "I did a very healthy thing by running away and taking charge of my life. There was no physical abuse or anything like that in my family. But there was a lot of psychological coldness. And I was this little dancing doll, the black sheep, going to classes, having recitals. There was a lot of envy in the air."
After making her Broadway debut in 1961 in "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," she worked constantly. Bennett cast her in "Promises, Promises" in 1968, and in 1970 she co-starred in "Company," also choreographed by Bennett. Following the mammoth success of "A Chorus Line," they married in 1976. (She had been married once before, briefly, to a compulsive gambler.) A year later, the marriage collapsed, her father died -- her troubled relationship with him still unresolved -- and Ms. McKechnie found herself literally paralyzed by rheumatoid arthritis. She was told by doctors that she might never walk again, let alone dance.
It took her more than a year, but she cured herself through diet, exercise and psychotherapy. "My doctor called it the war of the worlds," she said. "I was raised with one foot in the Midwest and the 'should be's,' this Calvinistic background that hasn't left me yet. And another foot on Broadway, living a life that's against everything I was raised to be."
"I was stricken like this," she said, holding her body board-stiff. "Even though I had run away, I took my family with me. It's a tug of war that stops you from growing up. I'm sorry it had to happen. I wish I had parents who nurtured me. I wish I went to one high school and stayed friends with those same people all my life. My girlfriends now from Michigan have grandchildren. I see the other road. I felt guilty about it for too many years. I used to feel I wasn't complete if I didn't try to do the other thing. But if I wanted that other life I would have had it. I am not without will or ambition. "I really respect families and marriage, but I finally accepted that there's room for a lot of different people in this world and people who bring different things, and if I'm one of them, why aren't I celebrating that?"
"You know," she went on, "when Larry Kert, who was in 'Company' with me, was dying -- our mutual friend told me this story -- Larry said to him, 'It's noble what we do.' " Unexpectedly, she starts to cry. "It rang so true to me, because the question is there sometimes. Is it enough in this world? Putting on makeup, singing and dancing? While other people are dying all around me? And he answered that question for me. I know he's right."
RAIN FALLS LOUDLY ON the skylight. It is one of the only moments when Ms. McKechnie allows a silence, determined as she is to fill every second with sound. She does not want to be a dancer who can't talk.
She does want to start teaching again now that she's back in New York, at the HB Studio. "I'd rather mother students than men," she said. "I think I'm meant to do that in a way. And I'm passing on Michael Bennett's choreography, and Bob Fosse's, and Chris Chadman's. I have to do my part to pass it on. We've lost too much too soon."
Indeed, many have pointed to her as one of the first AIDS widows. She nodded. "I know that and it's totally incongruous to me. Not to push it away, but that whole experience of Michael's life was unknown to me." Years of estrangement followed the couple's divorce, as he simultaneously pursued a homosexual life and set up house with Sabine Cassel, the wife of his friend Jean-Pierre Cassel, both witnesses at his wedding to Ms. McKechnie. With the exception of the record-breaking performance of "A Chorus Line" as the longest running show in Broadway history in 1983, Bennett and Ms. McKechnie rarely saw each other.
"When we talk about regrets I wish I had put two and two together," she says now. "He didn't tell me the truth about his illness. He gave me that rap about the heart bypass. He was in that place at a time when people didn't know what to make of what was going on. When you die of this, too many people are alone. That stigma is always present, and he had a lot of pride.
"Something incredible happened when I was in Washington touring with 'Sweet Charity' in 1987," she continued. "Bob Fosse died on opening night. Michael had died three months before. I got a call from a young woman who had been Michael's nurse. She came to see me. I wanted to know if he ever got settled or was at peace emotionally with it. She told me it was very hard for him. He didn't want people to come and visit. He tried to beat it alone.
"She saw him cry once. Sorry," she said, stopping for a tissue. "He reached his 44th birthday, and he said to her, 'I made it.' That was the only time she saw him cry. She said, 'He loved you.' I wouldn't have asked her, but that felt really wonderful. And she told me some funny things. He could never say, 'Don't leave, don't go.' It was hard for him to be dependent. She said she would be tired and ask, 'Can I get you anything else?' He'd say no and she'd start to leave and he'd say, 'Can you just turn the TV?' It made me smile. He didn't want her to leave but he couldn't ask her to stay. It said a lot to me."
She stands up to turn on the heat and gets an extra sweater from the bedroom. "After the memorial service for Michael at the Shubert Theater, we all went out, trying to make it cheerful and happy. It was hard. I left and literally bumped into Gwen Verdon on the street. I looked at her, she embraced me and I just sobbed. And the only thing she said was, 'You keep them alive inside.' I was thinking of that because I guess I don't miss him. I keep him alive. I think to myself always, 'How would Michael approach this?' He was never afraid to make mistakes. I knew him well enough to know what he would try. I keep him alive not just with my work. I pass it on."
It's dark out now. "You know," she said, "there's this little girl in our show who stands in the wings every night when I do my big number. Her mother always says: 'Oh, she adores you. She just loves to dance.' " She smiles and blushes a little. "And I see her there looking at that number every single night. And I think, if she sees me working this hard out there, never missing a night -- well, at least, that's something."
A version of this article appears in print on , Section 2, Page 10 of the National edition with the headline: THEATER;A Long and Twisting Road Back to Broadway. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe