Audra McDonald (with Seth Rudetsky) – Steppenwolf Theater – September 15, 2019

I got to experience the best part of a Seth Rudetsky Broadway Cruise without having to get on a boat, although even I have to admit that his June, 2020 Venice to Venice excursion sounds interesting. I know there are a lot of cruise bloggers, but I don’t know if any of them get free passage for their efforts. I need an agent. What’s 10 per cent of nothing?

McDonald also has a cruise next year. Perhaps that’s the one for me. After seeing the six-time Tony award winner in person for the first time, I just know we could be friends. The woman loves to laugh so much that she gets stomach cramps, and is down-to-earth enough to share that information as it happens.

McDonald also admitted to being a little loopy after driving to Chicago from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, following a concert the night before, because her flight had been cancelled due to storms. I wonder if she sings along with the radio in the car. Seth should have asked her that.

People came to hear McDonald sing, and she didn’t disappoint, hitting a note so high at the end of her audience sing-a-long of I Could Have Danced All Night that it caused the insides of a cat in the alley behind the theater to explode. However, her inner diva appeared briefly as she admitted her competitiveness over the fact that an audience member had matched the note.

McDonald’s personality glowed in stories about a beeper in her coffin in Ragtime, her improvisation in Shuffle Along, and her daughter texting immediately after McDonald’s Climb Every Mountain solo in The Sound of Music live television production to ask her about laundry.

But I’m not kidding when I say that the hit of the evening may have been her rendition of The Facebook Song, which, be warned, or perhaps encouraged, contains language that may be considered offensive.