Broadway star's concert to open reborn Chicago theater

"An Evening with Sutton Foster" reopens the renovated and rechristened 550-seat Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place in Chicago tonight. The four-performance-only cabaret show marks Broadway in Chicago's new lease on the former Drury Lane Theatre Water Tower Place.

"I'm honored to be playing Chicago with this concert," Foster wrote in an e-mail exchange. "To open the newly renovated Broadway Playhouse is amazing - I can't wait to see it."

Yet this isn't the first time Foster has played Chicago. During the 1990s, she toured here in shows like "The Will Rogers Follies," "Grease!" "Annie" and "Les Miserables." But the Broadway Playhouse concerts mark Foster's Chicago debut as a headliner, emphasizing why the Michigan native has become one of the most-talented go-to girls for originating new roles in a slew of shows that played on Broadway this past decade.

Foster was nominated for Tony Awards for her performances in "Little Women" (2005), "The Drowsy Chaperone" (2006) and "Shrek the Musical" (2009). She also worked directly with legendary film director and writer Mel Brooks in his 2007 musical adaptation of his 1974 film "Young Frankenstein."

But Foster's breakthrough was as the brash Midwesterner-turned-gold digging New Yorker Millie Dillmount in 2002's "Thoroughly Modern Millie." She got to live the understudy-becomes-a-star dream starting with the show's tryout in La Jolla, Calif.

"About a week before we started tech rehearsals, I ended up rehearsing for our Millie, Erin Dilly, who got sick. At the end of that week they asked me to take over the role," Foster said. "I remember being completely freaked out and thinking, 'What? They are making a mistake! I can't do this!'"

But Foster persevered through the stress, later opening the show on Broadway to great critical acclaim and winning the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical by season's end.

For Foster's Broadway Playhouse concerts, she teams up with music director Michael Rafter to perform numbers from her Broadway shows, plus other contemporary songs on her recently released solo album "Wish."

Foster also says there are a few surprises, particularly in the section she calls "The Big Book of Belt Songs."

"I put five songs in a cup and let an audience member pick," she said. "Every night it's a different song."

This month, Foster just finished an off-Broadway run of Paul Weitz's play "Trust" where she played a dominatrix opposite co-stars Zach Braff ("Scrubs") and Bobby Cannavale ("Will and Grace"). And next year, she is slated to play Reno Sweeney in a Broadway revival of "Anything Goes."

But now Foster is excited to return to Chicago, where she plans to do what so many other Windy City tourists do while visiting: tour the Art Institute and eat some deep dish pizza.

"An Evening with Sutton Foster"Location: Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place, 175 E. Chestnut St., ChicagoShowtimes: 7:30 p.m. tonight, 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Sept. 24 and 25, 2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 26Tickets: $55-$60, (800) 775-2000 or broadwayinchicago.com