Susan Egan - Theatrical Reviews

	Starring as Millie in Thoroughly Modern Millie Susan starred in this Broadway show in 2004




	Starring as Sally Bowles in Cabaret Broadway's longest-running Sally Bowles

Susan Egan, boasting an impeccable, déclassé Chelsea accent, is the perfect Sally Bowles. - Clive Barnes, NY Post

Talent Bowled Over: At long last! A Sally Bowles who can both sing and strike that just-right balance between vulnerability and flakiness. "Cabaret's" Susan Egan is divine... - New York Magazine

Susan Egan has replaced ... Jennifer Jason Leigh, who replaced Tony Award-winning Natasha Richardson as Sally Bowles, and, as rumored, Egan may be the best one yet. Better known as the original Belle in "Beauty and the Beast" -- how's that for typecasting? -- Egan is this concept's first Sally to be as much a singer as an actress. She has a knockout gamine waif-Olive Oyl flounce to her, and ... it is a pleasure to hear somebody in this revival sing the guts out of Kander and Ebb's wicked and magnificent songs. - Linda Winer, Newsday

As Sally Bowles, Susan is svelte, sexy, and sensational, bringing a new gamine look and appeal to this complicated role. - Liz Smith, New York Post

The new cast members ... are a potent group of celebrates. Chief among them is Susan Egan, a slip of an actress whose powerhouse voice scorches listeners with a terrifying version of the title song. Her rendition will change the way you hear it from now on. Her Sally is defiantly, almost strenuously hedonistic. - Michael Kuchwara, Associated Press

The show finally has a Sally Bowles who can both act and really sing: Susan Egan. The singer from "Beauty and the Beast" surprisingly finds new dimension of real strength and presence here; she's heading straight for disaster, of course, but she doesn't care. She's more believable and more likable than Natasha Richardson, and when she belts out the show's two great torch songs -- "Maybe This Time" (actually written for the movie) and the heavily ironic "Cabaret" -- they move you as they did not before. Unlike her predecessors, she makes Liza Minelli a distant (ands irrelevant) memory. - Jacqus Le Sourd, The Journal News

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

The new Sally is simply the best yet, Susan Egan. This pixie-pretty young woman is at least as good an actress as the role's creator (for this production), Natasha Richardson; and as a musical theatre veteran, Egan's musicality is miles beyond that sort of "let me act my way through it" choices that the musically raw Ms. Richardson's hard wiring necessitated she make. Even more impressively, because Ms. Egan is so accomplished a vocalist, she has an easier time of the production's unspoken conceit that in real life, Sally isn't much of a singer (else she wouldn't be in this dive) - just an unusually charismatic lost soul. Egan has control over the conceit - she knows when it works to her advantage and she has the technique to unobtrusively release it when she needs to go for "the kill." The kind of Disneyesque wholesomeness of her face (she was Broadway's first Belle, remember), mixed with her matching natural exuberance, makes Sally Bowles' self-imposed exile in Nazi Germany even funnier, sadder and more heartbreaking than before. As if she embodies the ultimate corruption of girl-next-door innocence. It pays to note here, too, how expansive the role is: because Sally is, perversely, innocent (naive at least), as well as delightful, seductive, and free-spirited, the character is open to many interpretations. I like Ms. Egan better than Ms. Richardson, but they couldn't be more different from each other and each represents a perfectly valid way to go." - David Spencer - Aisle Say

Cabaret - Moved and Improved: "Cabaret" is a better and richer show - at Studio 54 and with new principals - than ever... Since last month, "Cabaret" has new and brilliant stars in the key roles of Sally Bowles and the Emcee. ... 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 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, Susan Egan does. - Donald Lyons, New York Post

	Starring alongside Carol Burnett in Putting it Together at The Mark Taper Forum

In her ingénue 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

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

Egan is wonderful. - Ed Kaufman, The Hollywood Reporter

Susan Egan proves a knockout as Burnett’s rival. Egan goes from empty-headed coquette in ‘Lovely’ to heavily armed bombshell in ‘Sooner or Later’ and ‘More.’ Egan gives more stylish oomph to the later two songs than Madonna ever did in Sondheim’s Oscar-winning score for ‘Dick Tracy.’ - Debbie Arrington, Long Beach Press Telegram

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

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

	As Princess Leonide in Triumph of Love Starring opposite Betty Buckley and F. Murray Abraham

Susan Egan is charming, sexy, and amazingly talented. She is the troublemaker of this tale and, as the story has it, everyone on stage falls in love with her. You will too. -- Liz Smith, New York Post

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

For the delectable ... totally enchanting Susan Egan, the show could be a star maker. -- Clive Barnes, New York Post

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

Get out your dictionary, look up “adorable,” and if the name Susan Egan doesn’t come up, get a new dictionary. -- Michele Willens, Live!

	As the original Belle in Disney's Beauty and the Beast Tony Award, Drama Desk Award and Ovation Award Nominations

Susan Egan is a natural beauty as Belle. She exudes freshness and intimacy .... Egan’s Belle reminds you that ... this is a heroine you can care about. -Laurie Winer, Los Angeles Times

Susan Egan deserves great credit for making Belle more tart than sweet. - David Patrick Stearns, USA Today

Egan makes the most of (Belle). It’s an intelligent, balanced realization of a character that could easily be too cloyingly cute. And Egan has the other prerequisites for musical theatre stardom she sings and dances excellently. - Paul Hodgins, Orange County Register

Susan Egan is a terrific, relaxed Belle, exactly what is needed to bring the show down to size. Her bell-like voice and deadpan reactions to Gaston lend the show a welcome lightness of touch. - Michael Phillips, San Diego Union

Susan Egan is a particular delight: she captures the courage and spontaneity of what is among the best ingénue roles in musical theatre history and she has a crisp, clear voice that is perfect for the Broadway stage. - Barbara and Scott Siegel, Drama-Logue


	As Margy Frake in State Fair

Susan Egan has the vocal sophistication to layer her lovely version of “It Might As Well Be Spring” with sultry mezzo-tinted sensuality. I am struck at this genuinely gifted young performer’s ability to portray innocence without turning icky-cute. - Orange County Register

Egan is not just another ingenue -- her Margy is a woman to reckon with. And the actress could become the next Barbara Cook. - Winston-Salem Journal

	As Kim MacAfee in the National Touring Company of Bye, Bye Birdie

Egan is so good as Kim that her soaring voice and unselfconscious demeanor actually make one forget Ann-Margret. - The Los Angeles Times

Director Gene Saks has cast pert-faced Susan Egan who has a big voice and a nice dollop of daffiness. With her at the show’s center, its satire of adolescent hormonal romanticism works. -The Washington Post