Would that all Broadway performers suffered from the awful lack of charisma that Foster does. When she did her cabaret show, she was warm, personable and enchanting. Honestly I can seriously see some of the posters on this board if they were around a few decades earlier exclaiming that "that Merman broad is just so overrated and has no talent or range" and "don't get me started on that lousy Verdon!" When Foster's name is on the marquee, even in an underwhelming production, you know that you are going to get 110%, which is exactly why she keeps being cast in so many roles on Broadway.
Ironically, I see some of the same people that bad mouth Foster and some of the newer and most promising talent on Broadway (like Kelli O'Hara as well) bend over backwards to make excuses when name talent underwhelms. I love Bernadette Peters (I have seen her perform a number of times), but I thought her Sally in Follies was a nightmare and did not do justice to the score, and having to listen to ardent fans rush in with excuses like "She was suffering from allergies that day...have you no heart? She is only human!" is quite a lark considering how often those same people come down like a ton of bricks on others for far less reason. Or if one suggests that perhaps La LuPone's nomination for Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown might have been a stretch and smacks of them throwing her an undeserved offering every time she puts her little toe on stage, you get "Well...maybe it wasn't her best, but it is Patti. Patti deserves the Tony every year! Patti deserves the world and more. Patti, I tell you! PATTI!!!!"
On a side note to another post in this thread, I happen to like that in this production (and the London production with Sally Ann Triplett) that Reno is front and center dancing throughout the title production number. It never felt quite appropriate to me that she disappeared for large portions of it (sort of like when Dorothy Brock bitches in 42nd Street about being brought out on stage in the closing moments of a huge production number). If Megan Mullaly does step in, I hope she can do the dancing. I have seen the ill effects of when an actress cannot do even the limited steps when Leslie Uggams brought the tour of the show around many moons ago and it was not pretty - but then Rex Smith was eviscerating the score and dance steps as Billy Crocker at that time so that drew off some of the fire that would otherwise have been aimed at Uggams.
Updated On: 2/22/12 at 06:57 PM
