http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/ny-p2page32672095apr17.story
Modern Marvel
By gosh! 'Millie' actress fulfills dream
By Blake Green
STAFF WRITER
April 17, 2002
REMEMBER THOSE immortal show biz lines when the director tells the understudy "you're going out there a nobody and coming back a star!" - and it happens, just like that?
In yet another of those innumerable examples of life aping art, that's pretty much been Sutton Foster's experience. On billboards for "Thoroughly Modern Millie," the new Broadway musical, the longtime ensemble and understudy stalwart is the girl cutting loose in the red-fringed flapper dress.
Foster is Millie and, like her plucky character, left her small-town, middle-class life for the Big Apple with a dream that so far - by gosh! by golly! - is coming true. As someone exclaims about Millie: "Anyone can be born here, but to travel here on nothing but nerve and imagination ... !"
"I've never related to a part more," the 27-year-old actress with the button nose and megawatt smile was saying the other day in her cozy theater district apartment, a space she promises is actually smaller than The Star dressing room she's been assigned down the street at the Marquis Theatre. "I identify with her tenacity to make a name for herself and create her own destiny."
Admittedly, the stories aren't completely parallel: Millie's single-minded goal is a rich husband; Foster, who says she's in "a wonderful relationship" with the actor who's her apartment mate, appears not to be so graspingly materialistic - or even ambitious. "I just want to work, to grow as an artist and have a good reputation," she says with such unabashed goodwill that it probably has to be true.
Here's what happened: Foster had worked around - in road and/or Broadway companies of "The Will Rogers Follies" (which she joined at age 17), "Grease," "Les Miserables" and "Annie." The La Jolla Playhouse in California was preparing a 2000 stage remake of the 1967 film starring Julie Andrews, and she auditioned for the title role.
"We thought she was a little green," director Michael Mayer remembers about the actress he auditioned back then, adding, quickly, "but with a stupendous voice." Foster got a job in the chorus and understudied Millie, being played by Erin Dilly.
Stuff happened. Dilly was out and with just a few days of intense rehearsal, Foster was Millie by the first preview - and for the rest of the run.
"We were blown away by the sheer brilliance of her performance," Mayer gushes. With Broadway on the radar, Foster was offered the role in the future production.
The show has continued to be rejiggered by its creative team - which includes Jeanine Tesori, the Port Washington native who's composed the production's new songs. "By now," Mayer says, "the role's been written and cast around Sutton."
Unlike the season's other shows based on movies, "Millie" arrives with lower - but steadily rising - expectations. In the midst of it, "part of me is trying to stay grounded and keep my perspective and part is really loving it," Foster exclaims.
Dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, the actress has folded her legs around her and is moving her hands almost as fast as her lips. There's definitely an energy link between onstage Millie and offstage Sutton, although the actress insists she's determined to keep the two IDs separate. "I want to come home and just be me," she says.
That's why Millie's Louise Brooks bob is a wig: "After I take off the sassy costume, it's just Sutton there," says Foster, whose own brown hair hangs longer, in a less stylized cut. "If I had to walk down the street with that haircut, I couldn't ever leave the show."
All this began, Foster says, when her mother encouraged her, "a 10-year-old dorky kid who liked to entertain," to audition for the Augusta, Ga., community theater's production of "Annie." "I wanted to play Pepper, the bad girl, but I got cast as Annie."
Her mother also encouraged her, a high school senior in a suburb of Detroit by then, to make her maiden voyage to New York to audition for the touring company of "The Will Rogers Follies." "I got the part - there I was this naive innocent playing a sexy showgirl. I was on tour for a year and grew up fast."
She completed her studies by correspondence and in the spring, when the musical played Detroit, "they gave me a night off for the prom and the matinee off for graduation."
The Foster family has hatched two musical theater stars - Sutton's older brother Hunter plays the hero in "Urinetown" and both have just been nominated for the Outer Circle Critics Award. Twice, they've performed in the same Broadway musical, both times understudying the romantic leads. "Us, as the love interests," she exclaims, quickly adding, "we never had to go on together."
"This is the most demanding role I've ever done, that's for sure," Foster says about Millie, acknowledging that she still finds the spotlight "kinda weird. And I don't think it's fully hit me. A couple of years down the road, I'll probably look back and go 'wow!'"
WHERE&WHEN "Thoroughly Modern Millie," in previews at the Marquis Theatre, 1535 Broadway, Manhattan, opens tomorrow. 212-307-4100.
Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc.
