Sutton Foster starts a three-week run at the Cafe Carlyle, where she'll sing standards, show tunes and personal favorites.
It’s been six weeks since ABC Family pulled the plug on “Bunheads.” Sutton Foster, who starred in the ballet drama, feels the sting to this day.
“I’m still a little heartbroken,” she says. “I couldn’t have asked for a better showcase. But when you choose to be an actor it means rolling with the punches.”
At the moment, going with the flow and rolling with ups and downs brings the 38-year-old actress back to the Cafe Carlyle.
On Tuesday she begins a cabaret concert run there through Sept. 28. The show marks her first time back at the posh upper East Side night spot since her hit debut there in 2010.
Foster will be accompanied by pianist-arranger Michael Rafter. He has been a trusted friend and collaborator since 2002 when they worked together on “Thoroughly Modern Millie” — the show for which Foster won her first Tony Award. The second came in 2011 for “Anything Goes.”
The new show at the Carlyle is still in flux, but you can expect some Stephen Sondheim hits and other show tunes, plus standards and a few personal favorites.
“I have a feeling that the show will change as we go along over the three weeks,” says Foster. “That’s part of the fun.”
But there’s one constant — “Sunshine on My Shoulders," the John Denver classic. “That song speaks to home and family and just always feels right,” she says. “I’m not a dark and heavy kind of girl.”
Lightness is key to Foster’s burgeoning interest in art. She makes her New York gallery debut Sept. 16-23 at Taglialatella Galleries in Chelsea, and shares the wall space with Julien Havard, an artist who was Foster’s longtime dresser until he moved to Cape Cod.
Foster’s medium of choice is pen and ink drawings and mixed media.
“A lot of my work is whimsical and fun,” she says. “It’s youthful and just sort of easy. Again, nothing too dark.”
A portion of the proceeds from the sale of the artists’ work during the run of the exhibition will be donated to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.
Foster, who used to live in midtown Manhattan, now divides her time between Los Angeles and a lake home about an hour north of New York City.
“It saved my life when I was doing ‘Anything Goes,’” she says. “I needed it after an intense week.”
During her run at the Carlyle, she’ll be staying at one of the hotel’s suites. The prospect has her thinking of another famous former resident.
“I can pretend I’m Elaine Stritch,” she says. “Now that’s going to be fun.”
jdziemianowicz@nydailynews.com
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