A night with Sutton

I'm not totally sure when I first became aware of Sutton Foster. (It was not when I saw her in the ensemble of The Scarlet Pimpernel on Broadway in 1997.) I remember a friend raving about Thoroughly Modern Millie, the show that brought Sutton Foster to the limelight (and for which she won her first Tony). By the time Anything Goes was on Broadway, I was aware enough to gush to my father about her when he told me had snagged tickets to the show. He hadn't heard of her, but the next day, after seeing the performance, he called me to rave.

And, of course, I watched Bunheads (and it's worth going down the YouTube rabbit hole of dances from that show) and Younger (which had the added bonus of being about people working in publishing and was completely bonkers).

So I was delighted when I saw that Olney Theatre brought her in to do a concert as part of their recent celebrations (they opened some new spaces on their campus) and that tickets weren't crazy expensive. And they were 100% worth the price of admission, just to see her do "Anything Goes" with a handful of local performers. I had no expectation of her doing this, since it is a big number. But this is a performance that I routinely watch on YouTube--the version from the Tonys (below), the version from rehearsal before the show opened, the version of Jonathan Groff doing the choreo. 

Before the show, I was listening to the woman sitting next to me talking to her tween daughter. "She'll probably sing some songs you know, and some songs you don't know," the mom said, and she was right. Besides "Anything Goes," the moment that most delighted me was probably when Foster was talking about her 9-year-old daughter and then started singing "It's Raining Tacos" and the tween was audibly thrilled at this development.

I'm not sure what exactly I expected Sutton Foster to sing; primarily showtunes, probably. And she certainly did her share of those, but I was intrigued by the mashups she did--"Singin' in the Rain" with "If I Were a Bell", "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)" with "Three Little Birds" (the Bob Marley "Don't worry about a thing/'Cause every little thing gonna be alright" song). They were really fun! She also brought on some younger local actresses to do a song from Shrek the Musical, which was endearing--particularly with her digressions about how anti-feminist traditional fairy tales are. 

Ultimately, Sutton Foster was as endearing as I wanted her to be, with a nod to her relationship with Hugh Jackman in "Love Somebody" ("I love somebody/And I do/I love somebody/And his name is --" /winks/) and comments about her tap shoes being more comfortable than her Louboutins. And her voice, of course, was amazing.

I'm still bummed I didn't get to see her in The Music Man or Sweeney Todd, but am so happy I got to go out and see her perform in such an intimate setting.