It\u2019s weird to be looked up to by little girls,\u201d says Idina Menzel. We\u2019re sitting at a cafeteria table in the cavernous brass-and-chrome lobby of the Public Theater. It\u2019s the week before previews for her latest musical vehicle, Michael John LaChuisa\u2019s See What I Wanna See, and Menzel is describing her fan base\u2014which features an awfully high proportion of preteens for a self-described \u201cedgy little rocker girl.\u201d<\/p>\n
The adoration of the Hilary Duff set arrived with Menzel\u2019s best-known role: a Tony-winning turn as the bright-green teen witch Elphaba in the Broadway smash Wicked. But that audience\u2014the Long Island teenyboppers wearing I ♥ IDINA T-shirts who saw so much of themselves in her ugly-duckling character\u2014might be thrown by her turn at the Public, where she plays three rather adult characters: a kimono-clad femme fatale, a dangerous moll, and a coke-addicted actress. So Menzel made an unusual request for the downtown theater: a notice in front of the theater that read NOT APPROPRIATE FOR CHILDREN UNDER THE AGE OF 13.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s peculiarly appropriate that a Syosset girl who began her career on the Long Island bar mitzvah circuit is, at 34, preparing to give the Public\u2019s first PG-13 performance (though the notice was later changed to cut the specific age reference). Yet her fan base puts her in an odd position. \u201cI want to set a really good example, but I\u2019m not the most innocent person,\u201d she says, accidentally channeling Britney Spears. \u201cI\u2019m a little crass. But I just have to be myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Menzel\u2019s theatrical breakthrough was a very grown-up performance as a louche bisexual in Rent. But theatergoers know her best as that ubiquitous witch who belted out technically flawless pop ballads. They may also know about the full-blown critical backlash against her singing style (and, perhaps, her fan demographic)\u2014most notable in critic Ben Brantley\u2019s New York Times rant against the American Idol-ization of the Broadway musical. The popular spoof Forbidden Broadway even features a Menzel imitator belting out, \u201cI am the loudest witch in Oz \/ And no one\u2019s gonna turn my volume down!\u201d<\/p>\n
Menzel bristles at the criticism. \u201cI actually think Kelly Clarkson is extremely talented,\u201d she says. Declining to address Brantley specifically, she does say that \u201cbecause Wicked had a big budget, people knock it. If it had the same songs but we did it downtown in a little dark theater and I was standing on a chair,\u201d the reviews might have come out differently. Besides, she has that downtown pedigree. \u201cPeople forget where Rent came from,\u201d she says. \u201cI sing a duet to my gay lover, who\u2019s black! I mean, come on!\u201dWell, she\u2019s downtown now\u2014working on an experimental musical created by one of theater\u2019s most stubbornly anti-populist musical playwrights. (Menzel is also recording a second solo album and stars in the movie of Rent, out in November.) \u201cI just wanted to challenge myself,\u201d she says, predictably, but adds something else. \u201cI want to work with Michael John because I feel like people don\u2019t give me enough credit for my training.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her training began informally on Long Island, where Menzel (born Mentzel) was a classic diva in the making\u2014a musical-obsessed girl longing to act, sing, and flee the suburbs. The soundtrack to Barbra Streisand\u2019s A Star Is Born was the first album Menzel owned. \u201cMy grandmother took me to see that in the movie theater,\u201d she says. \u201cI know it\u2019s not cool; I should say a Bob Dylan record or something.\u201d But her pajama-salesman father and therapist mother didn\u2019t want to raise a child star, and she had to settle for school productions.<\/p>\n
At 15, Menzel found her way out: She became a wedding and bar mitzvah singer. Passing for 18, \u201cI\u2019d drive myself illegally with my junior license to the Temple Beth Shalom ballroom and work with all these older men. I grew up kind of fast. I had to come in with this huge repertoire.\u201d Her precociously sexy, exotic look\u2014doe eyes, full lips, aggressively jutting jaw\u2014had to have helped.<\/p>\n
By the time she graduated from NYU\u2019s drama program, Menzel had outgrown the wedding circuit and was focusing on downtown rock gigs. Auditions for a theatrical career had become almost an afterthought by 1995, when Jonathan Larson picked Menzel for his downtown rock musical about East Village squatters coping with aids, drugs, and gentrification. When he died the night before the show\u2019s opening, Rent\u2019s mythology was born: the scrappy posthumous rock opera that would take over the world. Rent was also where Menzel met her husband, Taye Diggs, who\u2019s since become the show\u2019s most successful alumnus.<\/p>\n
But while Diggs scored role after role, Menzel hit a rut. One record label dropped her after her EP failed to sell. She and Diggs were married in Jamaica by the country\u2019s official rabbi, to generous tabloid coverage\u2014but Diggs\u2019s name would always come first. \u201cI\u2019d walk down the red carpet with Taye and nobody knew who I am; they\u2019d push me aside,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Then came Wicked, which made her a household name (at least if your household made regular visits to TKTS). And her harrowing final week cemented her diva status. The day before Menzel\u2019s swan song, she cracked a rib falling through a trap door. Unable to perform on her last day, she made a curtain call in a tracksuit to a standing, screaming ovation.<\/p>\n
One of her more surprising fans was Michael John LaChuisa. Having railed publicly against unimaginative pop musicals, you wouldn\u2019t expect him to replace his show\u2019s original star, the classically trained Audra McDonald (who left to do a TV show), with a power-pop belter. \u201cI\u2019m a classicist,\u201d acknowledges LaChuisa, \u201cand she comes from a rock background.\u201d But for him, there was a bottom line: \u201cWhen it came to looking for someone young, who can sing the bejesus out of my stuff, and who can act, and who can be beautiful and sexy and has magnetism, I don\u2019t know of anyone else but Idina Menzel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her reputation as a belter, he says, is overblown. \u201cAt first she was shy about the colors in her voice. She became famous for her high belt, and I use that in the show\u2014I\u2019d be foolish not to\u2014but she\u2019s got jazz, she\u2019s got folk, she\u2019s got a degree of classical soprano in her voice. Each of the characters goes through a certain transformation, so I figure, use it all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both LaChuisa and Menzel cite a basic premise of musical theater, and one that neatly sidesteps her tentative acting: Character equals voice. \u201cA good actor for film knows what to do during the close-ups,\u201d says LaChuisa, \u201cand in musical theater, the song is the close-up.\u201d<\/p>\n
LaChuisa\u2019s instincts were spot-on. Menzel carries his wildly diverse tunes beautifully, adding emotional notes to a cerebral libretto without blowing out the little theater\u2019s footlights.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a good thing, because she\u2019s got even more intimate spaces in mind. In honing her solo cabaret act, Menzel has been carefully watching Bette Midler\u2019s shows. \u201cShe came out and she\u2019d sing Janis Joplin style, just blood from the vocal cords, and then she\u2019d do \u2018Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,\u2019 and the next thing you know she\u2019d come out in a wheelchair in a mermaid costume, and then do stand-up. I like that. Everybody in this business wants you to not confuse people. She doesn\u2019t care.\u201d<\/p>\n
No one doubts that she\u2019d be a crowd-pleaser in a one-woman show. But what kind of crowd would it be? \u201cThere are different clubs in the theater world,\u201d she concedes. \u201cHas Sondheim asked me to be in a show? No. Would I love that? Yes. Maybe he\u2019s not a fan of mine. And yet, am I proud that I can probably sell a lot of tickets? Yeah\u2014and I\u2019m not going to be ashamed of my popularity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s weird to be looked up to by little girls,\u201d says Idina Menzel. We\u2019re sitting at a cafeteria table in the cavernous brass-and-chrome lobby of the Public Theater. It\u2019s the week before previews for her latest musical vehicle, Michael John LaChuisa\u2019s See What I Wanna See, and Menzel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1326,"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":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/idinamenzel051024_175.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Srnq-ln","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1325","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=1325"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1328,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1325\/revisions\/1328"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}