Live from Lincoln Center: Sutton Foster

This is the first of four hour-long concerts on PBS from big-name Broadway stars.  I first heard about them last fall, they were recorded back in December, and now, they’re finally airing.  I’ve been waiting quite a while for these, and I’m very happy they’re starting up at last.

Filmed in Lincoln Center’s Appel Room (a very lovely, rather intimate space,) this series is promoted as four concerts centered around each performer and their musical history, something like the music that makes them up.  That was definitely evident in this first concert; while some songs were performed simply for fun and without preamble, others were obviously significant to Sutton Foster herself, both professionally and professionally.

She paid clear tribute to her career, although a bit less than I necessarily would’ve expected.  Early on, she did a nice medley of several numbers from her Broadway stage credits:  “Not for the Life of Me” (from Thoroughly Modern Millie, of course,) “NYC” from Annie (one of her earliest Broadway shows, where she appeared briefly as the young would-be actress just arrived in the city,) and Little Women’s “Astonishing.”  The concert also featured the wonderful “Gimme, Gimme” from Thoroughly Modern Millie, but to my surprise, Foster didn’t actually sing it.  Instead, she brought out another former Millie and gave her the big number while Foster provided a counterpoint with “I Got Love” from Purlie.  If there’s one thing I learned about Sutton Foster from this concert, it’s that she’s an incredibly generous performer.

In fact, she had several guests onstage over the course of the hour.  She also brought out Megan McGinnis, who played Beth in Little Women and who Foster called one of her dearest friends, and the two of them shared a beautiful duet – not “Some Things Are Meant to Be,” as I was hoping, but still incredibly lovely.  The evening’s final guest was Jonathan Groff, and having seen his Broadway Miscast performance of “Anything Goes,” I was prepared for how over-the-moon he’d be to be sharing the stage with Foster.  They performed a pair of really cute numbers together, and he even cajoled her into dancing a little.

Other numbers had a different sort of personal connection for Foster.  To commemorate her youthful dreams of singing at Lincoln Center, she performed a song she earmarked for herself back then, Jason Robert Brown’s “Stars and the Moon.”  She dedicated a breathtaking rendition of John Denver’s “Sunshine on My Shoulders” to her late mother, and she closed out the show with a medley centering on the theme of optimism (led by “Cockeyed Optimist” from South Pacific,) as a point of inspiration for her newly-adopted daughter.  In between, she mixed in a handful of other numbers, mostly old standards:  Kander & Ebb, Cole Porter, old-school Sondheim (she did “Everybody Says Don’t,” which I adore,) and the like.

Overall, I enjoyed it, but I was a little surprised at how restrained Foster was, in both voice and manner.  I’m used to her Broadway roles – via cast recordings and Tony performances – where she’s played many exuberant characters and put her belting to excellent use.  Not that she can’t be subtle, of course, but when I think of Sutton Foster, I think “big voice.”  Here, though, she was very controlled, unleashing her belt at key moments but letting most songs build slowly.  Even with powerhouse numbers like “Astonishing” – and, since that one was part of a medley, she came in at the end of the song, when it’s at its zenith – she reeled them out with care, singing them in ways I’ve never heard them sung.  I don’t know if it’s the smaller venue, or not being in character, or what.  I wouldn’t call it a bad thing, although I am very fond of her belt – at any rate, it was definitely hearing her in a different light.