McKechnie’s still at the top of her game

Professionalism and pizazz grace Donna McKechnie’s striking cabaret act, playing at the Orange County Performing Arts Center through Saturday. The Tony-winning Broadway star of “A Chorus Line” makes a peripatetic, poetic and sweet case for her rarified status.

Assisted by excellent accompanist Tom Griffin, McKechnie begins by selling the opening bars of “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” from offstage with a disarming twinkle in her soprano.

Sweeping on in glittering black, McKechnie ingratiates herself immediately.

Time has inevitably narrowed her terpsichorean range and agility, but her prowess at dance as conveyance of character is unblemished, every gesture and placement carrying import.

As does McKechnie’s autobiographical set, subtitled “My Musical Comedy Life.” This abridged version of her full-length theater piece, “Inside the Music,” suggests an animated scrapbook of clippings, with apt jottings in the margins.

“Am I chipper enough for you yet?” she cracks early on, typical of her boundless humor and candor. McKechnie’s patter leads to a medley recalling how she sought escape from Michigan dysfunction in silver-screen fantasies. Taking in icons from Rita Hayworth’s Gilda to Doris Day’s “masochist” Ruth Etting, she carries the audience in the palms of her gracefully outstretched hands.

McKechnie’s straight-toned chops are in fine fettle, as is her skill as raconteur. A magical anecdote about meeting Fred Astaire is embedded within a bubbling specialty number. Faced with a mishap, as when her head mike malfunctioned at Tuesday’s opening, McKechnie uses it to great advantage, a trouper’s trouper.

This also describes her fragmented re-creations of career touchstones, such as Bob Fosse’s skippity-hoppity “A Secretary Is Not a Toy” from Frank Loesser’s “How to Succeed in Business,” or Michael Bennett’s gonzo “Turkey-Lurkey Time” from Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “Promises, Promises.” Or “You Could Drive a Person Crazy” from Stephen Sondheim’s “Company,” which began McKechnie’s designation, along with Chita Rivera and the late Gwen Verdon, as one of Broadway’s definitive dancing stars.

Moreover, McKechnie can act, as in her searing reading of “Follies” character Sally, whom McKechnie played to great acclaim in the 1998 Paper Mill Playhouse revival. In tribute to Verdon, McKechnie closes with “If They Could See Me Now” from “Sweet Charity,” and the subtext is as bittersweet as the moves are pinpoint accurate.

Her encore is, appropriately, “Music and the Mirror.” Although the jete is absent and the double turns are now singles, the core content of this “Chorus Line” showstopper is intact, albeit truncated. Then again, with “Inside the Music” due at Burbank’s Colony Theatre this spring, McKechnie’s gilt-edged turn here amounts to a generous preview of coming attractions, so who’s complaining?

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Donna McKechnie: My Musical Comedy Life

Where: Orange County Performing Arts Center, Founders Hall, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

When: Today-Saturday, 7:30 p.m.

Ends: Saturday

Price: $49

Info: (714) 740-7878 or (213) 365-3500

Running time: 70 minutes