{"id":1136,"date":"2022-12-19T18:25:04","date_gmt":"2022-12-19T23:25:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/?p=1136"},"modified":"2022-12-19T18:25:04","modified_gmt":"2022-12-19T23:25:04","slug":"which-way-to-the-stage-chronicles-idina-menzels-winding-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/which-way-to-the-stage-chronicles-idina-menzels-winding-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Which Way to the Stage?\u2019 chronicles Idina Menzel\u2019s winding journey"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"lead | border_box gutter_16--desktop gutter_16--tablet relative\">\n<p class=\"paragraph | gutter_20_0\"><span class=\"html-render\">The rigors of the road and the pressures of performance are made abundantly clear in \u201cWhich Way to the Stage?\u2019\u2019, a new documentary about Idina Menzel that\u2019s streaming on Disney+.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph | gutter_20_0\"><span class=\"html-render\">Directed by Anne McCabe, \u201cWhich Way to the Stage?\u2019\u2019 follows Menzel on a national tour that culminates with the fulfillment of a lifelong dream: to perform at Madison Square Garden. \u201cIt took 47 years to get here,\u2019\u2019 Menzel observes.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"body | gutter_16--desktop gutter_16--tablet\n              \"><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph | gutter_20_0\"><span class=\"html-render\">Although Menzel is one of the documentary\u2019s executive producers, \u201cWhich Way\u2019&#8217; is fairly candid in capturing not just the joy of one of Broadway\u2019s premier belters when she\u2019s onstage (\u201dI always love the spotlight,\u2019\u2019 she admits) but also her anxieties, doubts, and occasional tears when she\u2019s offstage. A work-life balance is hard to sustain when you\u2019re touring, and it\u2019s poignantly clear how much Menzel misses her young son.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph | gutter_20_0\"><span class=\"html-render\">The documentary takes us inside rehearsals, recording studios, and dressing rooms as well as onto concert stages. It offers an overview of the struggles Menzel has faced in her life and career, including the baffling decision by her parents to make Thanksgiving Day (!) the moment to tell young Menzel and her sister that they were separating. Small wonder she\u2019s wary about how long good fortune will endure.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"paragraph | gutter_20_0\"><span class=\"html-render\">\u201cI never celebrate too much,\u2019\u2019 says Menzel, who appeared a year ago in the premiere of \u201cWILD: A Musical Becoming,\u2019\u2019 at Cambridge\u2019s American Repertory Theater. \u201cI\u2019ve had a lot of highs and lows.\u2019\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph | gutter_20_0\"><span class=\"html-render\">There\u2019s home movie footage of her singing \u201cEdelweiss\u2019&#8217; at age 9, and then, as a teenager, performing in a high school production of \u201cBye Bye Birdie.\u2019\u2019 She sang at weddings and bar mitzvahs before landing a breakthrough role as Maureen, a flamboyant performance artist, in the original 1996 Broadway production of \u201cRent.\u2019\u2019 (Of \u201cRent\u2019&#8217; creator Jonathan Larson, she says: \u201cEvery concert I ever do is because of him.\u2019\u2019)<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph | gutter_20_0\"><span class=\"html-render\">Yet Menzel experienced some lean years after she left \u201cRent.\u201d When you\u2019re equally drawn to, and adept at, Broadway, pop, and rock, \u201cThey don\u2019t know how to market you,\u2019\u2019 she says.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph | gutter_20_0\"><span class=\"html-render\">Her career shifted into high gear when Menzel landed the role of Elphaba in the blockbuster musical \u201cWicked,\u2019\u2019 earning her a Tony Award in 2004 and furnishing her with much-loved signature songs (\u201dFor Good,\u2019\u2019 \u201cDefying Gravity\u2019&#8217;) she could later sing in concert. As the voice of Elsa in \u201cFrozen\u2019&#8217; (2013), Menzel sang the ubiquitous \u201cLet It Go.\u2019\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph | gutter_20_0\"><span class=\"html-render\">Introducing her performance of \u201cLet It Go\u201d at the 2014 Academy Awards, John Travolta mispronounced her name as \u201cAdele Dazeem.\u2019\u2019 In the documentary, Menzel calls that flub \u201cthe best thing that ever happened to me.\u2019\u2019 Apparently when a major movie star gets your name spectacularly wrong in public, it instantly broadens your name recognition.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph | gutter_20_0\"><span class=\"html-render\">Perhaps the most charmingly human moment in \u201cWhich Way to the Stage?\u2019\u2019 takes place when Menzel arrives in New York, and she blurts out what amounts to one definition of success. \u201cAll the girls that were mean to me in high school: See ya!\u2019\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The rigors of the road and the pressures of performance are made abundantly clear in \u201cWhich Way to the Stage?\u2019\u2019, a new documentary about Idina Menzel that\u2019s streaming on Disney+. Directed by Anne McCabe, \u201cWhich Way to the Stage?\u2019\u2019 follows Menzel on a national tour that culminates with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1137,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_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","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[64,74],"class_list":["post-1136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-64","tag-which-way-to-the-stage"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/WIKVGB7P3UTJ6YYJME74T7LSMQ.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Srnq-ik","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1136","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=1136"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1139,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1136\/revisions\/1139"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}