By John Moore, The Denver Gazette | February 21, 2026
Sutton Foster and Kelli O’Hara will honor Carol Burnett and Julie Andrews with tribute concert joined by Colorado Symphony
I remember seeing Sutton Foster’s utterly charming breakout role as Millie Dillmount in the 2002 Broadway musical “Thoroughly Modern Millie” and thinking, “This must be what it was like for audiences who saw Carol Burnett’s breakout role as Princess Winnifred the Woebegone in the 1959 musical ‘Once Upon a Mattress’.”
And, hand to the Alps, I remember seeing Kelli O’Hara’s breakout role as Clara Johnson in 2005’s “The Light in the Piazza” and wondering if witnessing the arrival of this powerful yet utterly vulnerable fresh new face was anything like audiences seeing Julie Andrews’ breakout role as the melancholy Polly Browne in 1954’s “The Boy Friend.”
On Thursday, two of the most popular musical theater stars of this generation are clasping hands to celebrate two of the most popular musical theater stars of a previous generation. “An Evening with Sutton Foster and Kelli O’Hara,” performed with the Colorado Symphony at the Boettcher Concert Hall, is a gathering fully inspired by a legendary 1962 CBS special called “Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall.” They’ll mostly be performing songs and stories from their most iconic Broadway roles backed by our full hometown orchestra.