Fostering Success

HUNTER AND SUTTON FOSTER TAKE THEIR FAMILY ACT TO BROADWAY

They're like something out of a Broadway musical. Hunter Foster is the boy and Sutton Foster is the girl. He plays heroes, she plays heroines. But they can't play them in the same show, because Hunter and Sutton are brother and sis.

He's six years older. "I would torture him at home," Sutton says of their childhood in Georgia.

"She did torture me a lot," Hunter admits. "I had a band when I was 10 or 11, and she always wanted to be part of it. I wouldn't let her, and she would be beating on the door trying to get in."

"I wanted to be like him," Sutton says. And she is. Hunter—tall, dark, and handsome—is currently starring as Bobby Strong in the hit show Urinetown, nightly bringing down the house with the showstopper "Run, Freedom, Run!" (In his spare time he wrote the book for the recent Off Broadway musical Summer of '42.) Sutton—tall, dark, and darling—is on the verge of her own big arrival: she's Millie Dillmount in Thoroughly Modern Millie, the new musical based on the Julie Andrews film, but re-bobbed, re-fringed, and refreshed. "I feel like my whole life, all of my training, has led me to play this part," says Sutton. "I couldn't feel more prepared or more calm or more excited or more honored."

It must be fun to be on Broadway at the same time. "It's kind of neat to think about," says Hunter. "Here we are, we came from humble beginnings from a small town in the South, and we're in New York now. And it's nice to know that we're here." It's very nice.

LAURA JACOBS