Idina Menzel gives O.C. a wicked good show

Here’s a good question for local Gleeks: what Broadway diva could fill up 3,000-seat Segerstrom Hall for a simple cabaret show?

Hints:

– She’s hard to recognize when she’s not painted green.

– Hordes of young female fans could be overheard talking about “Glee” outside the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Sunday afternoon.

If those helpers don’t do it for you, then clearly you’re not a fan of Idina Menzel, nor have you been paying attention to musical theater over the last 15 years. Menzel, 39, is one of the few Broadway stars lucky enough to be associated with two iconic roles early in her career: Maureen, the feisty performance artist in “Rent,” and Elphaba, the very green, very misunderstood teen whose adventures in Oz are the subject of “Wicked.” The Long Island native originated both roles. She won a Tony playing Elphaba.

Menzel was in good spirits during her solo concert, and why wouldn’t she be? She was backed by a full orchestra, including a rock drummer and capable music director Rob Mounsey at the piano.

The intermission-less matinee performance included many of the expected Menzel anthems – “Defying Gravity” from “Wicked,” “No Day But Today” from “Rent” – and a few tributes to the superstar she has been most frequently compared to, Barbra Streisand. Menzel sang two numbers from “Funny Girl,” Streisand’s 1964 breakthrough musical: the down-tempo title song and its dynamic opposite, the over-the-top “Don’t Rain on My Parade.”

Looking foxy if a bit fidgety in a long purple dress, the raven-haired performer delivered both songs with a spirit and vocal style all her own.

While her instrument doesn’t equal Streisand’s in terms of range, raw power or polish (what voice does?), Menzel proved that she’s one of the most effective current interpreters of musical theater’s 11 o’clock numbers – those high-decibel story-cappers that come late in the evening and sock us right between the eyes.

It’s a voice that’s best in its lower and middle registers. Menzel bubbles over with an urgency and edge which, coupled with a unique ability to sell the story behind the lyrics, makes her renditions of the show-stopping numbers unforgettable. She proves the old adage that a great musical-theater performer doesn’t have to be technically perfect in order to get the job done; in fact, perfection is often the enemy. Like Ethel Merman, Bernadette Peters and other Broadway greats, Menzel can cut to the essence of a song, sacrificing precision in her quest for emotional truth.

Occasionally, Menzel’s repertoire got a little obscure or self-consciously cute.

She sang a few self-composed ditties that she and husband Taye Diggs sing to their 14-month-old son, Walker – sweet, but I’m sure a lot of fans were itching to hear more from “Rent” and “Wicked.”

Near the beginning of the evening, Menzel gave us an odd conflation devised, presumably, by Mounsey, an unlikely mash-up of Cole Porter’s “Love for Sale” and the hit that put the Police on the map in 1978, “Roxanne.”

Both songs are about prostitutes, true. Do they belong in the same sonic space-time continuum? That’s one that I’m sure Menzel’s fans were debating long into the night.

Other unexpected numbers were less controversial. “Look to the Rainbow” from “Finian’s Rainbow” was wonderfully delivered, and a welcome nod to an undeservedly overlooked musical. Another seldom-heard song was equally ravishing: Jimmy Webb’s “Asleep on the Wind.”

Menzel’s stage presence could best be described as Long Island Diva. She’s a master at ultra-dry asides and put-downs that hint at underlying competitiveness. A story about Streisand’s studied non-reaction after hearing Menzel sing one of her “Funny Girl” songs is hilarious. At times, Sunday’s concert felt like a primer on the wiles and ways of diva-ness.

Such trivialities aside, Menzel leaves no doubt that she’s a Broadway baby of the first order. One of her last songs of the two-encore afternoon was an a cappella number, “Wicked’s” “For Good,” that she pronounced was a “thank you” to Orange County for filling Segerstrom Hall on a Sunday with a houseful of wild, adoring fans.

Has this critic seen such potentially pandering moments before? A lot.

But Menzel’s a master. When it mattered, the ‘tude disappeared and she became, like her audience, a rapt fan of musical theater in all its transformative, in-the-moment glory.