Two-time Tony Award winner Sutton Foster became a high school dropout the first time she played San Francisco, and a college dropout for her second visit. Cast at age 17 in The Will Rogers Follies, which began its national tour at the Golden Gate Theatre in 1992, she quit school in Troy �" which proudly bills itself as the safest city in Michigan �" and headed to the wooly West to become a showgirl. "It was the first time I was away from home, and I got to live in San Francisco," she said. "It was, like, life-changing."
Two years later, with a high school diploma finally in hand, she bailed on college after just a year. "I moved home. I was feeling completely lost, and then I flew to New York to go to open calls," she said recently by phone. "I ended up booking the national tour of Grease, and four days later we shipped out to San Francisco. So I feel a very personal connection to the city."
Foster will be back in San Francisco on Jan. 16 for a concert at the Nourse Theatre. Part of the Broadway at the Nourse series, Foster will be accompanied by pianist and musical director Michael Rafter in a show that will benefit San Francisco AIDS Foundation, Project Open Hand, and the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus.
"It was originally going to be with Seth Rudetsky, but his musical Disaster! is getting ready for Broadway, and he was unavailable," Foster said. "Michael Rafter is my go-to guy, and we did shows at Cafe Carlyle and Carnegie Hall together, and we're working on a new album. When I was doing my concerts with Seth, they were a little more like a walk down memory lane. My concerts with Michael are a more intimate window into who I am as a person right now."
But Broadway babies needn't worry. "We'll definitely do things from Thoroughly Modern Millie, Anything Goes, Little Women, and Violet," Foster said of four of her Broadway credits, which also include The Drowsy Chaperone, Young Frankenstein, and Shrek the Musical. "These concerts are also an opportunity to try out material for the new album, which is about 90% done, but missing a couple of elements that we think will make it feel really complete."
Foster was also having a feeling of incompleteness just days before she was to make her solo concert debut at Carnegie Hall earlier this year. "I woke up one morning, and I was making pancakes in my pajamas for my husband, and I suddenly had this insane notion to do 'Rose's Turn,'" she said of Mama Rose's raging aria of anger and frustration that comes at the end of Gypsy. "It was one of those cool-ass insane things that could have gone really well or really badly, and it ended up going really well."
It was an acknowledgement that at 40, her ingenue days were moving into the rearview mirror. "I don't have the life experience to play Mama Rose right now, but it was, like, okay, I'm going to sing it from where I'm at now. It was definitely a career highlight." Will she sing it in San Francisco? "Probably not, but who knows? I've been known to pull off some crazy stuff."
Foster actually grew up with a mother who was, if not of Mama Rose caliber, someone who was always encouraging and enabling any showbiz tendencies that her children displayed. (Her brother is actor-writer Hunter Foster.) By age 15, she was a contestant on Star Search and a finalist for the cast of the rebooted Mickey Mouse Club. And hence the lack of objections to quitting high school for a gig in the chorus of a touring show.
"When I was 20, I had to figure out if I was living my dream and not my mom's unfulfilled dream. Growing up in a really small town in North Carolina, she had wanted to be a model and move to New York, and her father said, 'No way,' so she got married and had kids. During my 20-year-old crisis, I realized it was also something that I actually wanted for myself."
Foster paid her dues, climbing up the ladder through the chorus and understudy roles, with her big break coming when Thoroughly Modern Millie was trying out in San Diego in 2000. She was understudying Erin Dilly, and before the first preview, the creators decided to move her up into the title role.
"I was so naive and green when all that happened with Millie, which was good because I didn't realize that an $11 million musical was on my shoulders until after we opened in New York. I was more like, 'Let's go and put on a show,'" Foster said. "Then I had the feeling I had failed and let everyone down when the show received mixed reviews." Yet Foster went on to win the Tony Award as Best Actress in a Musical, and the show itself was a hit and won a Tony Award as best musical.
She won her second Tony Award for the 2011 revival of Anything Goes, and was nominated three years later for her performance as the title character in Violet. And then she was not singing and not dancing on television in Younger, which begins its second season on TV Land on Jan. 13. In the comedy-drama from Darren Star (Sex and the City), she plays a 40-year-old divorcee who can only land a job by pretending she's 26. She not only dupes her boss, but also the hip tattoo artist who becomes her boyfriend. He had learned the truth at the end of the first season, and now the two must navigate the new realities of their relationship while also maintaining the ruse for everyone else.
"I posted something on Instagram about a concert I was doing, and Younger fans were, like, You sing? There's this whole other group of people who have no idea that I'm a Broadway performer. Theater and singing will always be my number one passion, but it's nice to be able to be a straight comic actress."
Unlike her Younger character, Foster is forthright about her age and what that will mean to her career. "I haven't really had to face ageism head-on in my professional life yet," she said, "but the fact is I am getting older and it's making me think differently. I'm excited about the roles that are opening up for me, the roles I couldn't play in my 20s. I'm excited about the actress I'm becoming because I've got more shit going in my life, and that's the kind of stuff you get to work with."
Sutton Foster will perform in concert at Nourse Theatre on Jan. 16. Tickets are $50-$100. Call (415) 392-4400 or go to cityboxoffice.com.