Fairy tales can come true. Witness the still-rising star of Sutton Foster, Broadway’s brightest light, who takes on the role of a royal ogre in the stage version of Shrek.

By Michael J. Bandler

IT’S THE STUFF of Broadway legends: Leading lady catches cold. Young, fresh-faced un- derstudy steps in, enchants. Leading lady steps aside. New star is born.

Too storybook? Think this kind of thing never happens? Tell that to Sutton Foster.

Less than seven years after be- ing tapped to take over the title role as Thoroughly Modern Mil- lie during the musical’s pre-New York testing, this lustrous, sing- ing, dancing Tony Award-winner and multiple nominee will take the stage in December in one of the New York theater season’s most awaited new musicals: Shrek, adapted from William Steig’s clas- sic children’s book and the three movies drawn from it.

“It’s an incredible story of friendship,” Foster says, “and also a love story. It’s all about the idea of out- ward appearance versus what’s actually going on inside. And the music is awesome.”

At 33, the actress is today’s go-to triple-threat performer on The Great White Way. Her envi- able track record proves it: Over the six and a half years since the first Millie preview on Broad- way, Foster has starred in five original musicals, of which Shrek is the latest.

Foster is one of that rare breed of stage per- formers who can do it all—shifting into a sizzling dance routine right in the mid- dle of one of her trademark rafter-raising songs and also proving quite believable when dramatic moments arrive.

In Millie, she was a long- legged naïf who toe-tapped with machine-gun precision. Her pas- sionate, aspirational side came out as Jo March in Little Women. In The Drowsy Chaperone, she was all vamp, playing Janet Van de Graaff, a high-kicking, pirouet- ting, cartwheeling star who was showing off one more time before giving up the stage for married life. And last season, she yodeled in the hay as Inga, Mel Brooks’ giddy, somewhat dorky country girl, in Young Frankenstein.

“I feel that this is what I was meant to do,” she says.

Her newest character, Shrek’s Princess Fiona, may be the role that’s closest to Foster herself. “She’s all of my characters together, and I think I am, too. She’s goofy, introspective, grounded, passionate and complicated. And I’m complicated, so in a weird way, I’m closest to her.”

As movie fans know, Fiona is cursed: When she falls in love with Shrek, she takes “love’s true form,” as the lyrics read—that of an ogre.

“Even though her outward appearance is princess-beautiful, there’s a lot of ogre in her,” Foster says. “She’s tough, she’s strong. And as she goes on a long journey, she does unex- pected things. I love that about her.”

The Statesboro, Ga., native’s own jour- ney took her around the state and then, in high school, to the suburbs of Detroit. She started taking dance lessons when she was four and continued well into her teens. In high school, she performed in student productions and community theater. Her parents encouraged her, which was not sur- prising, since her older brother, Hunter, was making his own mark in musical theater as Sutton was growing up.

It was her mother who spotted the ad in a local newspaper announcing open au- ditions for the road company of The Will Rogers Follies, and urged her daughter to go for it. Sutton nailed the audition, left high school (completing it through extension courses) and embarked on a yearlong tour of more than two dozen cities.

It was a bold move for Sutton, given her age. “But they always knew I would be do- ing this, so they felt, why wait?” the actress says. “But I was young. A young 17. I was naïve—with my Sweet Valley High book and Teen Magazine. Traveling the country with grown-ups, I grew up really fast!”

When the tour ended, she enrolled in Carnegie-Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, but left after a year, moved home, then went to visit her brother in New York City. Once again, an open audition was announced– this time for the national tour of Grease. Again, she won a part. It took her across the country again, then back to New York for her Broadway debut. More ensemble and small parts followed, including understudy- ing the title character in a stage adaptation of the movie Thoroughly Modern Millie at the La Jolla Playhouse in California.

Then, during final rehearsals, came Foster’s performance in place of the lead- ing lady. The newcomer dazzled everyone. Soon the production’s creative team came to what Foster gently terms “a mutual understanding” with the original star—and the radiant understudy got the part.

“I burst into tears,” Foster remembers. “My first thought was, ‘You’re making a big mistake. I’m only 27. I’m an under- study; I’m here to learn. Are you sure?’”

They were—so much so that when the producers, director and composing team behind the project decided to take a year to work on the show before moving it to Broadway, they made an unusual request: that Foster refrain from taking another job and just wait for Millie to be ready for its transfer.

“I was okay with that,” she says. “I believed in the show so much. My life changed. Six, seven years later, I’m still blown away.”

Less than two months after opening night, Foster won one of the seven Tonys the production garnered, and she played Millie Dillmount for nearly two years.

To varying degrees, Millie and each of the other characters Foster has created onstage have an aura of fantasy. In that regard, Foster yearns for the opportunity, at some point, to break out, to do “some- thing contemporary, a realistic role in a small musical, something people haven’t seen from me.”

Before that happens, she will realize another dream: the release in February of her first solo CD, Wish, combining theater music with “songs we’ve unearthed—old pop standards. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time,” she says.

With everything that’s happened, Foster is exactly where she wants to be, and she hopes “to continue to work for as long as I can, to be challenged and in- spired and moved.”

And if that uplifted right eyebrow— one of her most distinctive physical fea- tures (“It goes up on its own, I have no control”)—is any reflection of her curios- ity and endless anticipation about what may be around the corner, she should be onstage, acting, singing and dancing, for quite some time to come.

ON THE ‘WAY

Theatergoers have much to choose from at Broadway’s best venues this winter.

Cast of 13

EQUUS
Broadhurst Theatre
Daniel Radcliffe and Richard Griffiths star in a revival of Peter Shaffer’s 1975 Tony Award-winning drama about a psychiatrist attempting to treat a troubled stable boy.

13
Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre
A comedic new musical, it centers on a teenager compelled to adjust to a new setting and try to fit in with the in-crowd at a new high school when his family moves.

ALL MY SONS
Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre
John Lithgow, Dianne Wiest, Patrick Wilson and Katie Holmes costar in a revival of Arthur Miller’s 1947 drama about the clash of morality with personal and societal responsibility within the framework of two families.

SPEED-THE-PLOW
Barrymore Theatre
Jeremy Piven, Raul Esparza and Elisabeth Moss costar in a revival of David Mamet’s acerbic glimpse of two Hollywood executives on the quest for a blockbuster.

BILLY ELLIOT — THE MUSICAL
Imperial Theatre
(Opens Nov. 13)
In this adaptation from the big screen, with a score written by Elton John, a working-class youth aspires to become a ballet dancer.

AMERICAN BUFFALO
Belasco Theatre
(Opens Nov. 17)
John Leguizamo, Cedric the Entertainer and Haley Joel Osmond costar in a revival of a David Mamet comedy-drama about a plot to steal a coin collection.

DIVIDING THE ESTATE
Booth Theatre
(Opens Nov. 20)
Elizabeth Ashley stars in Horton Foote’s comedy about an eccentric Southern family.

PAL JOEY
Studio 54
(Opens Dec. 11)
Stockard Channing, Christian Hoff and Martha Plimpton costar in a revival of a Rodgers and Hart musical about a scheming would-be nightclub- owner and the women in his life.

IRVING BERLIN’S WHITE CHRISTMAS
Marquis Theatre
(Opens Nov. 23)
This long-touring stage musical is based on the classic 1954 movie. It arrives in New York this holiday season for a limited engagement.