Broadway actress Audra McDonald captivated a near sell-out audience at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor last night. It was Ms. McDonald’s sixth appearance in Ann Arbor since 2000 as part of the University Musical Society’s series.

McDonald, 45, was a three-time Tony winner by the time she was 28 for roles in Carousel, Master Class and Ragtime. She won three additional Tony Awards for Marie Christine, A Raisin in the Sun and Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill. She is set to appear in Shuffle Along, which goes into previews this March on Broadway.

The actress is amidst a 65-city concert tour in which she sings several songs she has performed in Broadway shows, plus an assortment of American standards.

Like any good cabaret performer, McDonald mixes in solid and amusing banter about her life on Broadway and the occasional turn on television. She is warm and adept in relating the right story, like one about her texting with her daughter during the live broadcast of The Sound of Music in which she played Mother Abbess and was charged with delivering the show-stopping “Climb Every Mountain.” Her daughter was watching at home, and when McDonald got back to her phone after a scene, the daughter was asking about where the dryer sheets were.

Her selection of songs ranged from the classic, to the amusing to the little known. Besides the big song from Sound of Music, she sang “Over The Rainbow,” “I Could Have Danced All Night” [My Fair Lady], “Maybe This Time” [Cabaret], “I’ll Be Here”[Ordinary Days] and Go Back Home [The Scottsboro Boys].

I’m tempted to refer to McDonald as a mezzo-soprano. But she chafes at that characterization. In 2000, she told The New York Times, “I’m not…I have a chest voice and I can sing very low, but my tone, my timbre is more that of a lyric soprano. I can’t stand categories. I’m like always hopping around, I mean not for the sake of hopping around. I just don’t want to be boxed in.”

She also regaled the audience with a funny piece, “Are you Fu*cking Kidding Me?” about a an ex-boyfriend who tries to friend a woman on Facebook. As there was a strong contingent of University of Michigan musical theatre students and many young actors in the audience, the song went over big with laughs.

A not-too-obnoxious name-drop came before singing “Moments in the Woods” from Into The Woods. “I asked Sondheim what song of his I should do on this tour, and this is the one he chose for me.” From She Loves Me, which is being revived next year on Broadway, she sang “Vanilla Ice Cream.” She rightly refers to that show as a remake of movie musical In The Good Old Summertime, and refers to the film You’ve Got Mail as another version of the story. But hopefully she knows that the original story was in the 1940 film The Shop Around The Corner.

In marking the anniversary of the terrorist attacks on 9-11 this month, she remarked that she associates the song “Make Someone Happy” with her feelings about the events and the aftermath. Her version of the song from the musical Do Re Mi did just that.

McDonald’s voice is in her prime. She skated through all her pieces with only one note that got away from her. That’s to be more than forgiven when you are in the midst of a 65-city world tour. Her deft recovery from the slip, as well as a blown lyric on another song, was part of the charm of the show, and reaffirms her as one of the stage’s leading talents who enjoys taking her act on the road.