Musicals are often all about escapism, and in Idina Menzel’s grand return to Broadway, she takes that idea to a whole new level. “How would it feel to stop my life and be able to get completely away?” she says. She explores this question is Redwood, which she […]
Idina Menzel and her 15-year-old son Walker Diggs were all smiles at the Los Angeles premiere of “Wicked” on Nov. 9. But Menzel says she thought long and hard before allowing her son to join her on the red carpet. “I never let him ever go on the red […]
Co-conceivers Tina Landau and Idina Menzel, producer Eva Price and other team members walk us through their unprecedented process. In the midst of the pandemic, director-writer Tina Landau reached out to producer Eva Price with an idea for a show. As Price recalled, “[Tina] was like, ‘I’m pretty […]
Shortly before a run-through of her new Broadway musical, “Redwood,” Idina Menzel reflected on her performing roots that stretch back to Long Island. “Baylis Elementary, third grade,” she said during a Zoom chat from the Nederlander Theatre, where the show opens Thursday. “That was my very first solo […]
The Tony winner is back on Broadway in Redwood, and she’s once again flying. There is something poetically fortuitous about Idina Menzel returning to Broadway in a musical called Redwood. While she may only stand at 5’6”, her presence is colossal. Perhaps it’s her iconic career (Rent, Wicked, […]
As the actress prepares to open Broadway’s ‘Redwood,’ she exclusively tells Parade she sometimes thinks about ‘leaving the business and just sort of going off the grid.’ Two weeks before Idina Menzel returned to Broadway in the new musical Redwood, wildfire began to quickly envelope Southern California. Like […]
Menzel, a fan favorite since “Rent,” is back on Broadway in “Redwood,” and this time she’s climbing conifers. Idina Menzel was sitting on a bench in a California redwood grove, yearning for silence. It was late one autumn afternoon, and I had been trying for months to get […]
With Redwood, Menzel and an all-female creative team bring a new musical to the Great White Way. Idina Menzel is sitting in the same dressing room she did almost 30 years ago, when she made her Broadway debut as Maureen Johnson in Rent. This time around, though, her […]
Idina Menzel’s return to Broadway after 10 years in an all-new musical is the very definition of a theatrical event. Add to that a thrilling, immersive production that takes audiences inside a canopy of ancient trees, paired with a gorgeous original score and a moving story of resilience, […]
Only the women who’ve played Elphaba and Glinda in the show’s two decades onstage understand why the roles are so taxing — and so rewarding, too. The graduates of Shiz University are making their alma mater proud. In the 21 years since “Wicked” opened in New York, 43 […]
Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth have found their way back to Oz. Broadway’s original witches make a surprise appearance in director Jon M. Chu’s “Wicked,” but not as Elphaba and Glinda. The duo, who originated the leading roles in 2003, sing a new verse in “One Short Day,” […]
Idina Menzel, Ana Gasteyer and others open up on the pleasures and perils of playing the iconic “Wicked” character eight times a week. There may be no more spellbinding protagonist in contemporary musical theater than Elphaba Thropp, that green-skinned wallflower with a penchant for soaring over Oz and […]
Idina Menzel says that when the musical “Rent,” in which she played the flirty, bisexual performance artist Maureen, was making its surprising leap to prominence in the mid-1990s, journalists tended to overplay the similarities between the fresh-faced cast and the young East Village bohemians they were representing onstage. […]
Defying the Oz It’s ironic that Idina Menzel’s first line of dialogue in a Broadway show was “Which way to the stage?” More than eight years after her debut in Rent, this born performer shows no signs of needing directions. Menzel, a Long Island native who grew up dreaming […]
A few days before Halloween, Idina Menzel found herself 200 feet in the air, sitting in the canopy of a redwood forest. Outfitted in a bulky safety harness, puffer vest, climbing gloves and a bright red helmet, the voice of Elphaba and Elsa couldn’t help but break into […]