Audra McDonald brings Broadway to Tucson's University Boulevard

Audra McDonald might have an unprecedented six Tony Awards to her credit and a pair of Grammys, but on Tuesday night, before an audience of 1,500 loosely filling the hall, we felt like she was one of us, home for spring break.

"We are very, very, very happy to be here," she told the crowd a couple songs into her two-hour UA Presents concert. "We flew out of New York this morning where they were expecting their fourth nor'easter."

That storm hit late Tuesday night and brought with it blizzard conditions that threatened record snowfall on Wednesday, prompted New York City to close schools and delayed flights all along the Eastern Seaboard.

Which could explain the smile McDonald wore throughout the evening Tuesday, the first official day of spring. No snow, no rain, just a theater full of fans who were so very, very, very glad she made the trip.

McDonald's show felt more like a Broadway musical than a traditional sing-a-song-take-a-bow concert. She didn't simply sing Rogers and Hammerstein's "It Might As Well Be Spring"; she embodied the character of the Margy Frake, looking for love at the "State Fair." 

She hit that soaring high C in the whimsical "Vanilla Ice Cream" from "She Loves Me" and had to wipe away tears for the 9/11-themed "I'll Be Here" from "Ordinary Days." We laughed when she introduced us to the boys from "Baltimore" from "Good Morning Baltimore"; our hearts broke a little at the thought that the price of living "The Glamorous Life" ("A Little Night Music") could be time spent with your child; and it was hard not to feel a similar heartbreak hearing her sing Jeff Blumenkrantz's sobering teen-pregnancy ode "I Won't Mind."

In between songs, McDonald recalled memories of her daughters — her 18-year-old wasn't too thrilled when she invited her to see mom play Bess in "Porgy and Bess" and once told her her singing made her ears cry. She remembered long-gone friends including her mentor Barbara Cook, and heaped praise on other mentors including Stephen Sondheim.

But it was those songs — "Hurry, It's Lovely Up Here," "Stars and the Moon," "I Double Dare You," "Moonshine Lullaby," "Make Something Happen," "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" — and the emotional way she sucked us into them, slipping effortlessly and convincingly into character, that made us feel like we were in a storied New York City theater sans the storm instead of on a college campus in the middle of the Southwest desert.

And then she went there: "The Facebook Song."

The setup was perfect: We've all been there, gotten our hearts broken. And then we get a Facebook notification. The heartbreaker wants to be your friend on Facebook. 

The gall!

When McDonald got to the F-bomb-dropping punchline chorus, the howls from the audience were priceless.  

Probably the biggest highlight Tuesday was when McDonald revisited "Porgy and Bess" — which earned her one of her Tonys — and dipped low into her soprano register for Bess's sobering "Summertime" before soaring as high as her range would take her for "I Could Have Danced All Night," the "My Fair Lady" signature song that she told us earns singers their soprano card. 

"Do you want to sing along?" she asked the audience near the end of the song — something she does at all of her concerts — and the whole of Centennial Hall broke out into a glorious chorus with a few wonderful ringers. 

McDonald took a step back and looked out into the dark hall; where was that voice coming from, she asked, trying to pinpoint the clarion soprano that soared above all the other voices and filled Centennial Hall. As the song ended, McDonald had figured she had found the runaway singer, a woman near the front who told McDonald she was retired from the defense industry.

Those of us sitting about 18 rows back wanted to leap out of our seats and tell McDonald that the largest voice in the audience was actually coming from Tucson opera singer Korby Myrick, whose clarion high notes were in perfect synch and pitch with McDonald's. We even tried to cajole Myrick, a regular soloist with Tucson orchestras who has sung around the country, to stand up, but she just smiled and demured.

Maybe the next time McDonald comes to Tucson, Myrick will sit in the front.