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Led by Tony winner Sutton Foster, Encores! Off-Center’s upcoming production of Andrew Lippa’s THE WILD PARTY also features Steven Pasquale (who made his New York stage debut and understudied the role of Burrs in the MTC production of THE WILD PARTY), Brandon Victor Dixon, Foster’s YOUNGER co-star Miriam Shor, Joaquina Kalukango and Talene Monahon, along with Renée Albulario, Ryan Andes, Penelope Armstead-Williams,James Brown III, Rachel DeBenedet, Raymond J. Lee, Kenita R. Miller, Sydney Morton, Clifton Oliver, Charlie Pollock,Britton Smith, Ryan Steele and Samantha Sturm.
BroadwayWorld brings you a first look at the cast in rehearsal!
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In May we shared the first part of a chatty, wide-ranging conversation with Encores! Off-Center stars Sutton Foster and Jonathan Groff. In part two, Foster explains why she was drawn to The Wild Party and Groff shares what he learned by seeing her six times in Thoroughly Modern Millie. (They also talk about farting princesses and bad Irish accents.)

CITY CENTER: Jonathan, I wanted to ask how you stay present during Hamilton. You’re only onstage…
JONATHAN GROFF: I’m onstage for nine minutes, total.
SUTTON FOSTER: Really?
JG: Yeah.
SF: That’s a good job.
JG: Every other night, I watch. I just am obsessed with watching the show because it’s endlessly fascinating, and there’s so much going on. And then emails, phone calls, a little reading. I practice my British accent for a good 20 minutes every day before I go onstage. What I’ve started doing lately is just reading random books in a British accent. It’s still hard for me to get my mouth around it.
SF: The only time I ever did an accent, I had to play an Irish nun—
JG: When did you play an Irish nun?!

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When you first met with Micaela, did you know what direction you wanted to go for your Tony look?
Not really. I always like classic and sophisticated. I knew I didn’t want to wear anything that felt too much like a costume or that felt glitzy. I knew I wanted to feel comfortable. And I knew I didn’t want to wear black. So when I was talking to Micaela the first time I was giving her that direction. Then when I met with her, this dress [the ombre Naeem Khan] was the first one that I saw when I walked in—I turned the corner and I was like, “That’s pretty.” We tried on fifteen dresses and that was the sixteenth dress and we were like, “This is the one.” But it was the first dress I saw. The color was different and I loved the ombre. And it fit.
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The Tuesday before the Tony Awards we accompanied Sutton Foster and amazing stylist Micaela Erlanger (she’s responsible for the red carpet looks of Michelle Dockery and Lupita Nyong’o among others) to a fitting at Naeem Khan’s studio in midtown Manhattan. We got to see all of the effort—from picking jewelry (Fred Leighton) and shoes (Kurt Geiger) to getting the fit of the dress absolutely right—that goes into creating the perfect red carpet moment. And we brought along photographer Sarah Hiatt to document the occasion.
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It’s a tale as old as time: Broadway actor breaks out, abandons the theater for Hollywood, then slinks back 30 years later for a limited-run Sondheim revue. But Sutton Foster and Jonathan Groff are bucking that trend. The onetime Millie and Melchior have both managed to carve out fascinatingly eclectic screen careers while regularly returning to the stage. In the past year alone, Foster bagged a Tony nomination for Violet and starred in the TV Land sitcom “Younger,” while Groff did a Clint Eastwood movie, shot the final season of HBO’s “Looking,” and joined the cast of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s genre-busting juggernaut Hamilton.
This summer, they’re coming to City Center in musicals that find them playing radically against type. Groff is playing a cynical Jewish songwriter in William Finn’s A New Brain (June 24-27) and Foster will play a Jazz Age hoofer trapped in a cycle of abuse in Andrew Lippa’s The Wild Party (July 15-18). We chatted with the two stars about car crashes, stage-door fans, and taking risks at Encores! Off-Center.
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