Review Quotes
S u s a n E g a n
... Starring as Sally Bowles in Broadway's "Cabaret"
Life really is a "Cabaret" when you pass through the portals of Studio 54, to see bewitching Susan Egan, who was the original Belle from "Beauty and the Beast." As Sally Bowles, Susan is svelte, sexy, and sensational, bringing a new gamine look and appeal to this complicated role. And boy can she belt!
- Liz Smith, New York Post
"Cabaret"
is a better and richer show - at Studio 54 and with new principals - than ever….
Egan
at first comes on like an Audrey Hepburn who's lost in Deutschland. Perky,
wide-eyed, and sporting bangs, she's a nice English girl adrift in a scary
world.
In her early numbers at the club - "Don't Tell Mama" and "Mein
Herr" - she resembles a good girl playing at being bad.
But
when Sally falls for Clifford and becomes pregnant, Egan goes from Mary
Poppins to Mother Courage in an electrifying rendition of "Maybe This
Time." She digs deep and sings
loud and turns the song into a passionate grab at redemption.
The song "Cabaret" was, for Minnelli, a hedonist anthem. For Richardson, it became a sad-eyed mockery. Egan faces the song's despair, then dredges up a false, feverish energy. She gets both the horror and the survivor pluck. Just when you thought Sally Bowles couldn't break your heart again, Susan Egan does.
-
Donald Lyons, New York Post
Yet
another Richardson role - the downwardly mobile club singer Sally Bowles in
"Cabaret" - is being filled by Susan Egan … Egan packs more into her
stage time than any of her predecessors.
You always see the emptiness in her freewheeling bravado and can't help but be touched by her eagerness to please. Musically, she sings with a gracelessness appropriate to the talent-impaired Sally, but only as an accomplished musician can. All of this climaxes with her rendition of the title song. She becomes a ghostly, frantic Dorian Gray portrait of a pre-war Weimar Republic selling it's soul to the Nazis.
- David Patrick Stearns, USA Today
TALENT BOWLED OVER
- New York Magazine - 7/26/99
…Starring
along side Carol Burnett in “Putting It
Together”
“Putting It Together offers sensational performances not only by Carol Burnett but also by the rising star Susan Egan .... Egan executes [her role] with tremendous panache.”
-
Don Shirley, Los
Angeles Times
“Egan is a performer of great promise, with a sharply focused soprano, unforced girlish charm and sound comic instincts. Her rendition of ‘More’ (from the film ‘Dick Tracy’) is beguiling in the extreme.”
-
David Marmelstein, Variety
“Egan proves the most versatile, dancing with energy and skill, and managing the most silly and the most poignant songs with equal style.”
- Frances
Baum Nicholson, Star News
“In her ingenue role, Egan more than holds her own against her feminine rival, brandishing her vocal claws in ‘There’s Always a Woman’ and innocently exalting the consumer excesses in ‘More.’”
-
Reed
Johnson, Daily News
“Egan makes a wonderful wench, and her musical-theatre chops are amazingly smooth .... Her duet with Burnett, 'There’s Always a Woman,’ is a battle of witchy wits, and the pairs mutual hatred glows with malevolent glee.”
- Paul
Hodgins, The Orange County Register
…as
Princess Leonide in Broadway’s “Triumph
of Love”
Susan Egan, Tony-nominated for her performance in “Beauty and the Beast,” here moves into the front ranks of musical actresses with her sweet but strong turn as Princess Leonide.
- Greg
Evans, Variety
Egan now gets to play a gender-bending young woman who dominates the action, controls the plot, and makes everyone weak in the knees. She revels in the role.
-
Fintan O’Toole, New York Daily News
Susan Egan is a perfectly wonderful Princess Leonide with a warm soprano voice, a beautiful face, and the physicality of a classic clown. It is a potent combination.
- Howard Gradet, Baltimore Chronicle