Everyone has an if\/then moment that leaves them wondering what might have happened if life went another way, and the opening night performance of parallel-lives Broadway musical \u201cIf\/Then\u201d gave opening nighters reason to recall theirs.<\/p>\n
Take composer Tom Kitt, who reteams with collaborator Brian Yorkey on \u201cIf\/Then\u201d after the duo won a Pulitzer for musical \u201cNext to Normal.\u201d If the Columbia U. soccer coach hasn\u2019t recruited Kitt\u00a0for Columbia, then Kitt\u00a0never would have met his wife, who never would have introduced him to Yorkey.<\/p>\n
If Kitt\u2019s if\/then moment had turned out differently, then he might have worked for Morgan Stanley, which offered him a job that he turned down to pursue songwriting. If Yorkey\u2019s if\/then moment had gone another way, he\u2019d be dead.<\/p>\n
Yorkey was 11 when his sister took the car out to pick up his other sister. \u201cShe asked if I wanted to come and get Big Gulps, which is what we did back then, but I was in the middle of a Hardy Boys book so I said no, I\u2019m gonna stay home and read,\u201d Yorkey recalled at the \u201cIf\/Then\u201d opening night party at the Edison Ballroom. \u201cThat day my sister\u00a0was broadsided and the whole car was totaled except for the drivers seat. She got out with just a few scratches, but if I\u2019d been in that car I wouldn\u2019t be alive today. We all have those moments, right? You look back on it and you think, \u2018The Hardy Boys saved my life!\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
For Idina Menzel, the \u201cFrozen\u201d and \u201cWicked\u201d star making her return to Broadway after a decade, her if\/then moment hinges on a part she didn\u2019t get in a show directed by Michael Greif, who helmed both \u201cIf\/Then\u201d and \u201cRent,\u201d the tuner\u00a0that launched Menzel\u2019s career. \u201cIf I hadn\u2019t auditioned for Michael in a show no one\u2019s ever heard of, he wouldn\u2019t have seen me and then brought me in for \u2018Rent,\u2019 \u201d she said. \u201cBut the whole point of \u2018If\/Then\u2019 is not to look back so much, and to understand that the choices you make set a pathway but they don\u2019t define you.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the moment, she\u2019s thrilled that the path she\u2019s chosen has brought her back to Broadway. \u201cI feel closest to myself when I\u2019m here in New York working with this community,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to explain. It reinvigorates me. It just feels closest to who I am.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Everyone has an if\/then moment that leaves them wondering what might have happened if life went another way, and the opening night performance of parallel-lives Broadway musical \u201cIf\/Then\u201d gave opening nighters reason to recall theirs. Take composer Tom Kitt, who reteams with collaborator Brian Yorkey on \u201cIf\/Then\u201d after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[42,40],"class_list":["post-1040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews","tag-42","tag-ifthen"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/if-then-broadway-opening-idina-menzel.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Srnq-gM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1040"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1044,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1040\/revisions\/1044"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}