TONY-AWARD winning actress Sutton Foster brought her solo concert show to Los Angeles last week much to the delight of her west coast fans, some of whom discovered her eight years ago in the pre-Broadway run of “Thoroughly Modern Mille.” She would later become one of Broadway’s leading ladies, also starring in “The Drowsy Chaperone,” “Young Frankenstein,” and most recently “Shrek: The Musical.”

The 80-minute set, now touring the country, features songs from the stage, the jazz, folk and pop worlds, and primarily from her solo 2009 CD “Wish.” She is accompanied by her long time friend and collaborator, Michael Rafter, who helped develop the show’s concept based on Foster’s talent for belting out songs, treating them with her brand of sweetness and, most of all, her quirkiness. While she appears unassuming and unadorned by the flashy accoutrements of a stage diva, Foster alternately charms and alarms. With a twinkle in her eye that’s sometimes mixed with goofy wink, she teases the audience with her opening song, “Something’s Coming” from “West Side Story.” She then flips it and tenderly continues with some of her CD’s folksy songs (“Up on the Roof”) before her naughty side emerges with “Air Conditioner,” a song about a woman whose only criteria for spending the night with a man in the hot, humid city is his home cooling system. She’s always engaging and surprising, bringing out her Tony award, using prop glasses labeled “Ho” and “Pimp” and a book called “The Big Book of Reeeally High Belt Songs.”

Georgia-born and Michigan-raised, Foster landed in New York and found work on Broadway in the chorus. In 2001, she was cast as the understudy to the lead in “Thoroughly Modern Millie” at the La Jolla Playhouse outside of San Diego. A week before tech rehearsals began, the lead became ill and Foster was to have replaced her until the actress returned. The producers saw something else in Foster and offered her the role of Millie that later took her to Broadway and won her a Tony. During the run of the musical, based on the film of the same name starring Mary Tyler Moore and Julie Andrews, she became friends with Rafter (“Millie’s” conductor/musical director) as well as Jeanine Tesori and Dick Scanlan, who wrote the music and lyrics and with whom she continues to collaborate. Foster tells one of the funniest Broadway out-of-town fiasco stories about “Millie’s” pre-Broadway run and closes her show with her “Millie” showstopper, “Gimme, Gimme.” She may be best known as a Broadway “belter,” but Foster’s musical gift equally dazzles with its grace, humor, depth and warmth.

Tour dates include Stockbridge, MA in August and New York’s Café Carlyle in June. For more information, go to www.suttonfoster. com