In these last few vaccination-heavy Pandemic months, the hopeful phrase “light at the end of the tunnel” is repeatedly heard. It’s in this frame of mind and voice that Sutton Foster has brought along Sutton Foster: Bring Me to Light, an intimate, indeed cabaret-like streamed production. She’s so cheerful that her opening medley begins with the Oscar Hammerstein II-Richard Rodgers “A Cockeyed Optimist.” She means her indomitable buoyancy, all right.
She—along with guests Raul Esparza, Kelli O’Hara, Joaquina Kalukango, and newcomer Wren Rivera—has that nearing tunnel-end in her sights and is mostly in an upbeat mood to celebrate the occasion.
This is musical leading lady Sutton Foster who might not have been quite so free to put the upbeat 55 minutes together were she performing as Marion the Librarian to Hugh Jackman’s Harold Hill in the now very long anticipated and very long postposed revival of Meredith Willson’s The Music Man, still eager to get going at the Winter Garden.
Wearing rehearsal togs much of the time, Foster is doing her chipper chirping (little or no terping)—Leigh Silverman is the on-top-of-things director—in Manhattan’s City Center auditorium. She and pals reduce the cavernous, no-audience-on-hand space into a cozy room. There’s no scenery, just the brick-and-metal bare bones environment.
Sutton chooses the venue because she’s appeared in two Encores! series dust-offs there—the Jeanine Tesori-Brian Hawley Violet and the Stephen Sondheim-Arthur Laurents Anyone Can Whistle. From the former she wistfully reprises “Lay Down Your Head,” Tesori at the piano. On comes Esparza to recall their impassioned duetting of Sondheim’s “With So Little to Be Sure Of.”
One thing about this threnody in the much-lionized songwriter’s canon is that it’s one of no more than two, at the most three, ballads of his that express unmitigated love. (Another is “The Best Thing That Ever Happened” from Bounce and its Road Show revise.)
The sunny Foster is happy turning the stage over to powerhouse Kalukango, who has a go at her showstopper “The Life of the Party” from Andrew Lippa’s hotsy-totsy The Wild Party. The very young Rivera works through the determined “Here I Am” (Jamie Houston music, lyric). Rivera is so accomplished that they find ways to vary the repeated title declaration, no mean feat.
O’Hara, another Encores! veteran, doesn’t delve into her past there but joins Foster on a gorgeous arrangement of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now.” (O’Hara also gets to do the City Center donation pitch.) Note that Michael Rafter is at the piano most of the time and serves as Foster’s musical director. He’s augmented frequently by Matt Hinkley on guitar and, once, ukulele.
A musical lover giving the line-up some brief thought would quickly realize that in Foster and O’Hara two of today’s foremost leading ladies are present. (Perhaps the only others are Audra McDonald and Kristin Chenoweth.) Furthermore, a strong argument could be made that Esparza is without rival as the moment’s leading male, musical division.
Foster shines her performing light throughout, using a pure voice with unceasing nuance. Often, there’s a slightly nasal quality to her singing that suggests a prevailing youthfulness. (No wonder she keeps popping up in her Younger television series.) Before she finishes with a behind-the-credits version of Frank Loesser’s “If I Were a Bell,” she ventures into the Carolyn Leigh-Cy Coleman “Hey, Look Me Over” and fearlessly takes on “The Impossible Dream” (Mitch Leigh-Joe Darion). She does a fine job, too, on her “Bring Me to Light” title tune (Tesori-Hawley again). Tesori also serves as creative director of the evening.
An unmissable Sutton Foster: Bring Me to Light effect is Foster’s keen attention to a lyric. She doesn’t utter a single word without supplying a convincing subtext. At one point, she mentions her vocal training with Rick Bodick. She says she never precedes a performance without thinking of her debt to him.
He trained her so well and she learned so well that, she explains, he is the reason she not only takes the stage with such authority but that she also devotes much of her time to teaching. These days she—and Rafter—are on the Ball State University faculty, where Rivera is, or has been, a student.
Prior to that assignment, she taught at New York University. Luckily, I was able to attend one of her classes and can report that she’s every bit as powerful a teacher as she is an entertainer. That, of course, is saying something.
Attention, fashionistas and fashionistos. Though in dressed-down togs for half the time, Foster does smarten up in styles by, among others, Michael Kors and Jimmy Choo.
Sutton Foster: Bring Me to Light was streamed beginning April 28, 2021 and will remain online through May 31. Information and tickets: nycc.vhx.tv
