The Tony-winner took full advantage of support from Emerson Musical Theatre students and the South Shore Dance Ensemble.
The Tony-winner took full advantage of support from Emerson Musical Theatre students and the South Shore Dance Ensemble.
Sutton Foster at Emerson Colonial, Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026.
“I’m a two-time Tony winner.” Tossing that out in the middle of a concert could be a lot of things: a flex, a segue to a song from one of the shows in question, a prompt for cheap applause, an ego run rampant. In Sutton Foster’s case, it was comic self-deprecation.
The Broadway and television star (and mother of a 9-year-old) had just sung “Raining Tacos,” Parry Gripp’s maddeningly ubiquitous children’s meme, to an audience that seemed in large part to be hearing it for the first time. With lyrics of lettuce and shells, cheese and meat having just poured out of her, the singer wished to remind everyone that she was in fact quite accomplished, despite the ridiculousness she’d just engaged in arguing otherwise.
The rest of Saturday’s performance at the Emerson Colonial didn’t quite meet that level of reassurance that Foster is just like the regular folks who succumb to the same goofy earworms, but as two-time Tony winners go, she was refreshingly down to earth, -ish. She punctuated her showtunes with Simon & Garfunkel, Dan Fogelberg, the Carpenters, Mister Rogers, and Mary Tyler Moore, and her goal never seemed to be to stun with skill and power but to ease minds with comfort and warmth.
And with a little bit of cheek. Taking the stage as the temperature on the other side of the venue was dropping into single digits, Foster opened with “In The Cool, Cool, Cool Of The Evening” and tossed in lyrical references to Boston and the Colonial. For the simple and jaunty “Love Somebody,” she ended up replacing the line “I love somebody but I won’t say who” with “I love somebody and his name is…” before cutting herself off, winking at her new relationship with her The Music Man costar Hugh Jackman without coming right out and saying it.
