She can dance with any man at all — and now, Donna McKechnie is going to do just that, playing Lucille in No, No Nanette with the Reagle Players in Waltham, Massachusetts. Here’s a chat I recently had with the Tony-winning star:

Peter Filichia: When No, No, Nanette had its smash revival in 1971, you were busy doing Company, then On the Town. Did you ever get a chance to see it?
Donna McKechnie: Opening night, on an off-night from Company. I can still see Helen Gallagher dancing with Bobby Van. So when Robert Eagle, who runs Reagle, told me he was doing Nanette, and if I wanted to be in it, all I had to do was pick the part I wanted — which never happens — I immediately said, “Helen Gallagher’s role.”
PF: Did you see the recent Encores! revival?
DM: Yes, because Robert took me. He’s a real gentleman of the theater who gives us what we used to have on Broadway: One producer. Makes it easier. I love, too, that with summer stock mostly gone, there’s still a place where kids can learn to sing, act, and dance before an audience.
PF: How aware are kids of who you are?
DM: Very — because they always Google me before I get there.
PF: What advice do you give them?
DM: Well, it’s boring to have to listen to an older person say, “Do this, and don’t do that” — especially from someone old enough to have done The Red Mill in high school. (Can you believe that’s what our teacher had us do? Not even Show Boat!) But it’s not long before I find myself telling the kids, “Keep going, attend a school that teaches singing and dancing and acting, for now there are lots of them around. And don’t run away from home.”
PF: But you did.
DM: I had to. My parents didn’t want me to do this at all. They refused to send me money, so I wouldn’t have any and would starve and have to go back to Detroit. I said, “I’ll show you.”
PF: And you did.
DM: By immediately getting into How to Succeed. The first Broadway show I saw was the one I was in. Suddenly, Abe Burrows was my first acting coach, Frank Loesser my vocal coach, and Cy Feuer my surrogate father who insisted, “I want you to sing every day!” I needed those mentors, because my parents weren’t going to do it for me.
PF: Did your folks live to see your success?
DM: My mother did, but my father died only a week before I appeared on the cover of Newsweek, when Chorus Line happened. I couldn’t have imagined that when I was making $116 a week in How to Succeed. But I put as much of that money as I could into my studies. I tell kids to find the teachers, mentors, yes, but most of all, make a group of like-minded friends who’ll stay together and understand each other’s problems. When I taught at HB Studios, I told the kids there to create a peer support group, and I was very proud that they stayed together after the semester was over.
PF: At which point during Chorus Line did you realize, “My God, this is going to be immense and legendary?”
DM: Ironically, during a scene that we later found wasn’t working and was cut. It was supposed to take place in the wings of the theater, not on the stage where everything happens now. It was a scene between me and Kelly Bishop — Sheila — just sitting and talking about what was happening at the audition. But that’s when I first thought, “This show is terrific, everything that I thought it could be: Human, moving, real. Original. Simple. Pure.”
PF: You weren’t originally chosen by Zach as one of the eight, then Marsha Mason convinced Michael Bennett to choose you. Did that make a difference to you psychologically that you were chosen and not rejected?
DM: It actually did. I was feeling the rejection as Cassie, but it was so close to the bone to all the rejections I’d ever experienced. Getting chosen also made me happier for Cassie and Zach. They may not have the relationship they had before, but now that he’s chosen her and they’ll be doing the show together, they might have a friendship, or at least a good working relationship.
PF: About 10 years after you left the show, you came back. Did that feel like a step backwards?
DM: No, because I enjoyed it so much more then. When it originally opened, we’d all been through this hard time creating it. Then we had all that attention and were asked to do a million things. The company was not happy, for there was strife and bitter jealousy. After I left, I said to myself, “What a shame; here’s the most important show in my whole career, and I can’t look back at it with fondness.” But when I came back, there was a very friendly cast there, almost sibling-like, who was thrilled they were getting to do it with me. How many get a second chance like that?
PF: You’ve done some plays in recent years.
DM: Yes, The Glass Menagerie in Shreveport, Louisiana. I’m playing Carol Lawrence’s daughter in a play this fall in Girl’s Room, Joanie Fritz’s play about an Auntie Mame-like mother and me, a ballerina who injures herself a week before she was going to do a big role. Character parts. I like them.
PF: Have audiences liked you in non-musical roles?
DM: Well, for years after A Chorus Line, people felt if I did anything else, I was robbing them of the specific pleasure they once had. Some would come to the stage door and introduce me to their daughter Cassie. So, yes, it was a type of albatross around my neck. Michael (Bennett) once said to me, “I think I’ve done you a terrible disservice,” and that really hit home after Sheldon Harnick saw me in a play. He said, “When you said in A Chorus Line, ‘I can’t act,’ I assumed Donna McKechnie couldn’t. Now I don’t feel bad any more. You really can act, and I should have that figured out from the way you said, ‘I can’t act’ so convincingly.”
PF: How did you feel about the Chorus Line revival?
DM: I love that Michael’s legacy lives again. I had a young cousin who came to town, and she said, “Do you mind if I see A Chorus Line, even if you’re not in it? I didn’t want to ask.” I said, “Absolutely! See it!”
PF: Looking back on it all: Biggest mistake?
DM: Turning down Bob Fosse twice, first when he wanted me for Pleasures and Palaces, and a year later for Sweet Charity. But by then I’d played Philia in the national company of A Funny Thing, so — unlike Cassie — I said I wouldn’t go back into the chorus. So he stopped calling and inviting me. I should have realized that you’re more than just a chorus person when you’re in a Fosse show. But I wanted to show I could act. That’s why I auditioned for and acting role, not a dancing one, in Promises, Promises, as one of the secretaries. After I got it, Michael (Bennett) had the idea of putting in “Turkey Lurkey Time,” and he needed the secretaries to dance. The secretaries who couldn’t were fired. That I could dance wound up saving my job.
PF: Biggest missed opportunity?
DM: I almost got to do Guys and Dolls in London with Elaine Stritch. I was going to be Sarah Brown, and she was going to be Adelaide.
PF: You know, I inferred that — because I don’t picture Elaine Stritch as Sarah Brown.
DM: I see what you mean.