IDINA MENZEL Ever since she burst forth on the stage of the Nederlander Theatre in the original cast of Jonathan Larson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Rent, Idina Menzel has been a force to be reckoned with in the musical theatre. The New York native possesses one of the most unique […]
It’s weird to be looked up to by little girls,” says Idina Menzel. We’re sitting at a cafeteria table in the cavernous brass-and-chrome lobby of the Public Theater. It’s the week before previews for her latest musical vehicle, Michael John LaChuisa’s See What I Wanna See, and Menzel […]
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, […]
She wasn’t in costume, she wasn’t in makeup, and she wasn’t even in character. But when Idina Menzel took the stage in a tracksuit yesterday afternoon at the Gershwin Theater, the standing ovation — some 1,800 strong and five minutes long — was like few you’ve ever seen: […]
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 […]
EIGHT times a week, Idina Menzel, who plays the witch Elphaba in the Broadway musical ”Wicked” at the Gershwin Theater, covers her face, hands and neck with green makeup, then puts on a matching bodysuit so that she is the color of a snow pea from head to […]
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 […]
News, views and reviews about the multi-talented women of the musical theatre and the concert/cabaret stage. There has never been any doubt about Idina Menzel’s vocal prowess. From the moment she stepped on to the Broadway stage as Maureen in the late Jonathan Larson’s Rent, it was clear […]
”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 […]
Forget what you know — or what you think you know — about those two powerful forces in the land of Oz, Glinda the Good Witch and her nameless nemesis, the Wicked Witch of the West. In Wicked, the new musical by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman, audience […]
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. […]
Michael Cole at a Wicked Reading in December 2001 Part of The Schwartz Scene back issue archives. Carol asked me to write about my experience singing in the ensemble of the December reading of WICKED. For those of you who don’t know, a “reading” of a musical or […]
Wild Women, Divas and Broads” from the worlds of musical theatre, cabaret and opera have booked into downtown Manhattan’s Joe’s Pub this May. Among the women to be featured are Daphne Rubin-Vega, Liz Callaway, Idina Menzel and Tonya Pinkins. Wild Women, Divas and Broads” from the worlds of […]
Idina Menzel, formerly of Rent and The Wild Party, sings her own pop and blues tunes in the Sh-K-Boom Room at the Cutting Room Dec. 7. Joining her will be singer-songwriter Gavin DeGraw. Menzel made her Broadway splash as Maureen in the original company of Rent. She most […]
John Fante, a major ‘little-known’ author, produced autobiographical novels about his early struggles which have inspired a select cadre of admirers. Among the most committed of these is writer-director Robert Towne, who’s been trying to get Fante’s Ask The Dust made for years. The upshot is a careful, […]