Gala 2012 Kristin Chenoweth

Turns out the loss of singer/actress Katharine McPhee as headliner might have been the audience's gain for Saturday's gala 2012 fund-raiser for Lehigh University's Zoellner Arts Center.

With apologies to McPhee, who pulled out less than two weeks ago because of an unspecified medical condition, it's hard to imagine a better show than the one given by McPhee's replacement, singer/actress Kristin Chenoweth.

In what was far more a one-woman theatrical show than a concert, the Emmy- and Tony Award-winning Chenoweth was, by turns, funny and dazzling, all the while singing superbly.

It didn't hurt that Chenoweth felt she had something to prove (she said just that late in the show) — giving her first public performance since suffering a skull fracture and other injuries in a July incident on the set of the CBS show "The Good Wife."

Whatever the reason, the 75-minute show was a commanding performance in every way — sassy and theatrical and frothing with Chenoweth's talent.

She stepped out on stage giving two thumbs up, in a floor-length, pink spaghetti-strap gown, still tiny atop 5-inch, sparkly silver heels. She explained she wore pink to honor her mother, a two-time breast cancer survivor, plus "I didn't want you not to see me."

She also immediately showed the performance would have a good dose of comedy, as she carried with her a 44-ounce Wawa iced tea, for which she said she developed a love when her parents lived in West Chester. (Her frequent sips during the show barely dented it.)

Chenoweth addressed her replacement status in the first song, "Should I Be Sweet," which she sang sassily, asking whether she should be "hot or sweet, sweet or hot? Chenoweth, McPhee, McPhee, Chenoweth."

That was just the first of many asides between the show's 15 songs, which covered tunes from the Broadway shows in which she has starred, her award-nominated appearances on television's "Glee" and her 2011 country album "Some Lessons Learned."

She also addressed her turn as second runner-up in the Miss Pennsylvania pageant in 1992.

"What is she doing now, Miss Wilkes-Barre?" she said cattily, tongue firmly in cheek. "Let's find out."

Chenoweth was just as uninhibitedly theatrical in her singing, pantomiming the song "Taylor the Latte Boy," which she said she brought out of retirement because of the show's sense of career revival for her. On "Ice Cream" she texted on a cellphone as she sang — her voice operatic.

"Boy," the first of five songs she did from her album, was almost Disneyesque in the way her voice soared. Another song from the disc, "What Would Dolly Do," (for which she "talked" with Dolly Parton on a cellphone she borrowed from the crowd) was chugging country. It also had a delightful double entendre lyric about the title's initials, WWDD, ending in "double D."

And "Fathers and Daughters," which she said was her favorite song on the disc, was especially touching. She sang it seated in a spotlight, in a lower, less chirpy, register that was much richer.

The songs from her stage shows and television were uniformly strong, all sung in a belted Broadway voice.

She nailed the soprano theater presentation on "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again" from "Phantom of the Opera," and received a huge cheer. On "Maybe This Time," which she sang on "Glee," Chenoweth threw back her head and let loose with a growly yell, and this time the audience gave her a standing ovation.

After making several snide references to her injuries ("I don't know if I mentioned I got hit in the head," she said at one point), she finally told "the story you've all been waiting for," recounting how she "woke up in an ambulance" afterward and just recently discovered she had even cracked three teeth.

So she wore a bejeweled neck brace to sing "Popular" from "Wicked," inserting lyrics in Japanese and German for a version she said was "Glinda [the Good Witch] around the world." And for "For Good," she brought a 14-year-old girl from the audience to duet with her, and got another standing ovation.

Before the last song in the main set, Chenoweth talked about using the performance to prove to herself that she was recovered.

"I'm OK and I'm good and I can replace Katharine McPhee," she said. "I proved something to myself: I can do this!"

The song, "I Was Here," also from her new disc, was the best of the show. It was the closest Chenoweth came to contemporary popular music, and the 12-person orchestra's presentation was stirring, as was Chenoweth's singing — both rising and building before she closed with a big note to another standing ovation.

As an encore, she performed a short "Til There Was you" from "The Music Man."

"This is my first performance back, and you're the perfect audience," Chenoweth told the crowd.

That's because it was the perfect show for a Zoellner gala.