The first time "All About Walken" co-star Amy Kelly and I "connected," we didn't. She was – in the words of her voice mail message – "about to jump on the treadmill so I can be in shape for this show."

In the show, which will be performed Saturday at the Guild Theater, the Sacramento native portrays Robert De Niro as a taxi driver hustling actor Christopher Walken around New York City. She also is one of eight actors who impersonate Walken during different periods of his life and in various movie roles (including some he didn't have).

It's a strange and funny piece of theater.

Kelly attended Sacramento's St. Francis High School (class of '93) where she "did a lot of acting and got the bug," she said Monday afternoon in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. She was attending San Francisco State University when she met fellow acting student Patrick O'Sullivan, who came up with the idea for "All About Walken."

"We had a mutual friend named Dan Carlos, who also was from Sacramento, and he was always doing impressions," O'Sullivan said by phone from his L.A. home. "We were all theater majors and would do impressions of each other and how we acted on stage. Dan was really taken with actor Jay Mohr and his impersonation of Christopher Walken. Dan started impersonating Mohr impersonating Walken and then I started impersonating Dan impersonating Mohr impersonating Walken."

Then, one day, "sitting in a theater in acting class – it was a really bad class – I thought, 'Wait a minute. What if I did a show of a bunch of people imitating Christopher Walken?' " O'Sullivan said. He sat on the project for a couple of years, but after researching Walken's biography, reviewing his remarkable list of film appearances and learning such interesting tidbits as the fact that Walken, at age 15, was a lion tamer in a circus, he began crafting the show. It was first performed in L.A. in 2006 and has played off and on to sold-out houses for the past three years.

He cast several of his friends and former classmates in the show. Apparently, it wasn't difficult to find good Walken imitators. "We have about 20 Walkens altogether, but we only put eight on stage at a time," he said.

"I never knew where (it) came from," Kelly said. "When Pat told me about the show and said he wanted me to 'do' Walken in it, I was ecstatic. See, back in school, I was kind of jealous of Dan and Pat because I couldn't imitate Walken and they could. So I made Dan teach me. I basically ripped Dan off."

At the audition-rehearsal for "All About Walken," Kelly sang "Like a Virgin" as Christopher Walken. The bit ended up in the show, along with several other unexpected elements.

"She's very much a physical comic," O'Sullivan said of Kelly. "She goes for everything 100 percent. She's always been like that, even in college. This is the first time a medium has been able to show the spectrum of her abilities."

You can almost feel Kelly blush over the phone line when she hears O'Sullivan's praise. "Pat kind of brought me back to life as far as comedy went," she said. "He reminded me why I love doing comedy."

Kelly said she has imitated members of her family and celebrities from childhood. Her mother is "one of my biggest fans," she said, but added, "she's constantly forcing me to be a show pony – 'Kelly, come over here. Do De Niro.' "

Kelly, 35, described herself as "a big Italian girl, so I've got to be in shape-ish for this show. It's obvious I'm female when I'm playing Walken or De Niro, but that's part of it.

"When I'm onstage, I leave everything behind. Any worries about money, relationships, the restaurant (she also runs the trendy Kung Pao Kitty restaurant and bar in the heart of Hollywood) – they're all gone. I lose myself totally in these characters."

Kelly expects a bunch of family and friends and "half the class I graduated with at St. Francis" to attend the show Saturday. After all, they voted her "most likely to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame." (They also said she was "most likely to ride a Harley cross country," which she has yet to do.)

As for show creator and co-star O'Sullivan, his latest venture is "All About Jack," a stage show in which a series of actors impersonate Jack Nicholson. He also has cast Kelly in that production.

Call The Bee's Jim Carnes, (916) 321-1130.