To many, especially a generation of “Frozen”-loving youngsters, Idina Menzel is Queen Elsa and, more importantly, the voice of the film’s Grammy Award-winning hit “Let It Go.” But there’s more to her story than that. A Tony Award-winning Broadway veteran, Menzel has originated key parts in “Rent,” “Wicked” […]
Idina Menzel mooed as the performance artist Maureen in the original production of “Rent” in 1996 and, ever since, Broadway audiences have mooed back. Over the past decades, Menzel has won over everyone from musical theater nerds to Tony voters to princess wannabes, as Maureen with her audience-participation […]
What’s tougher, live or voice acting? I like live action, obviously. But with voice acting, there’s less pressure and no makeup. I love it. You take your 7-year-old son, Walker, to most tour dates. How has that changed things? I see the cities through a child’s eyes. If […]
Phoenix is the last city on Idina Menzel’s list—and that’s a good thing. It means that a 56-city, three-continent tour by the vocal artist some have called “a contemporary Barbra Streisand” will culminate here, September 3, at Comerica Theatre. What will she be doing after September 3? “I […]
Every once in awhile an opportunity comes up in life that makes you pinch yourself. Today, this came in the form of a conversation with the one and only Idina Menzel: an artist who, throughout her career, has inspired me on so many levels. We talked her upcoming Nashville […]
Sisters in song! Idina Menzel and her sister Cara Mentzel teamed up to sing “Never Never Land” to coincide with the upcoming release of Mentzel’s memoir, Voice Lessons: A Sisters Story. The Broadway actress, 46, explains in the video that Peter Pan was the first musical she and […]
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, […]
After going green—and winning a Tony Award—for her rafter-piercing origination of Elphaba in “Wicked,” Idina Menzel solidified herself as a reigning queen of musical theater. What, then, brings the emblem back to the New York stage after over three years away? The answer, surprisingly enough, is a straight […]
Idina Menzel has done it before. Once. In New York City. On New Year’s Eve. In Times Square. She sang outside in the cold. Freezing cold. “Zero degrees,” she recalled of that night in 2014. Well, weather records indicate that it was 27 degrees but she’s a Broadway […]
On Monday, May 21 [2018] (7:30pm), Broadway will battle it out at the 6th Annual Karaoke Benefit- a spectacular show of unpredictable karaoke to support A BroaderWay Foundation, founded by Idina Menzel. New to the event this year, cast members from The Lion King, Frozen, SpongeBob SquarePants and […]
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 […]
Beth — in a deeply felt, richly sung performance by Idina Menzel — is a bright urban planner, quickly rising to the top in New York’s city planning department while agonizing over her messy non-love life. Liz — also played, no less potently, by Menzel — is more […]
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 […]