The Showstoppers The Frozen Soundtrack 13 Weeks on Billboard 200 In a particularly cold climate? for music sales, Frozen broke virtually every Hollywood rule — no “prince charming” narrative or genre trends — to become the year’s biggest phenomenon. The soundtrack moved more than 3 million copies, making […]
When Stephen Schwartz’s iconic Broadway musical Wicked first found it’s home at the Gershwin Theatre in 2003, success was not guaranteed. The musical had a particularly large budget for a new Broadway show ($14 million), and initially received mixed reviews from critics, most notably from The New York […]
NBC is celebrating one of Broadway’s longest running shows this month with A Very Wicked Halloween: Celebrating 15 Years on Broadway. Wicked‘s original stars, Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, are set to reunite once more to honor the occasion with a concert event. Additionally, the concert event will see […]
Fifteen years ago, one of the top films in the land was “Finding Nemo” and Shania Twain played the Super Bowl halftime show. 50 Cent’s “Get Rich or Die Tryin’” was a hit album and a couple of witches-to-be took over Broadway. The musical “Wicked” shook off some […]
Idina Menzel turned Wednesday night’s Kennedy Center Gala, a classic Washington society event, into basically the coolest karaoke session ever. The Broadway star sparked a giant singalong when she solicited help from the audience to accompany her in the “Rent” duet, “Take Me or Leave Me.” First to […]
The most memorable performances in any medium are being given by a remarkable group of industry veterans — Judith Light, Allison Janney and Audra McDonald, among them. For a long time, you could open a movie with a close-up on a woman’s face, as long as she presented […]
It can be hard to believe that it has been more than two decades since a then 24-year-old Long Island native named Idina Menzel shot to superstardom as the feisty bisexual Maureen in Jonathan Larson’s groundbreaking musical Rent. And what may be equally hard to believe is that, […]
For Gay Pride Month, Billboard asked numerous pop culture luminaries to write ‘love letters’ to the LGBTQ community. Below, singer and actress Idina Menzel — who originated the Broadway roles of Maureen in Rent and Elphaba in Wicked — shares hers. Happy Pride Month! To my LGBTQ friends […]
”IT’S good to see me, isn’t it?” Thus does Glinda the Good Witch introduce herself, suspended in midair and floating down into Munchkinland at the start of ”Wicked,” the new $14 million Broadway musical that takes place in the fictionally familiar land of Oz and opens at the […]
Everything was Rent 20 years ago, when the show opened at Broadway’s Nederlander Theatre April 29, 1996. The cast takes us back to what life was like then. After Rent made its debut at Off-Broadway’s New York Theatre Workshop in January 1996, the musical quickly took off—garnering national […]
No matter what happens in Idina Menzel’s career, there will probably never be anything like what she went through last year when she was riding atop the pop culture wave. Professionally, “Frozen,” for which Menzel supplied the voice of Queen Elsa and sang the breakout song “Let It […]
Oscar and Tony award winner Idina Menzel is bringing her Broadway musical to Hollywood. In “If/Then,” Menzel plays a 40-year-old woman who moves back to New York City for a fresh start. The audience watches as her life splits into two parallel paths with both storylines playing out […]
Tony Award winner Idina Menzel, who was to play her final performance in Wicked Jan. 9, was injured during the Jan. 8 matinee of the hit Stephen Schwartz musical. Shoshana Bean, Menzel’s standby who was slated to officially take over the role of Elphaba beginning Jan. 11, played […]
Tony Award winner Idina Menzel, whose final weekend in the hit musical Wicked was marred by an onstage injury that left her with a broken rib, has posted a letter on her official website. Menzel writes, “So here I am, on my couch, propped up by 12 pillows, […]
A new generation of fans got to know Idina Menzel through her work on the blockbuster movie “Frozen” and the song “Let It Go,” which became a huge crossover hit. But as much as she appreciates what that song in particular did for her career, Menzel — appearing […]