CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio \u2014 Misfortune almost strikes during Act 1 of the musical \u201cWicked\u201d when Elphaba, the future Wicked Witch of the West, gets caught mid-song in a rain shower. Funnily enough, she doesn\u2019t melt. For an audience that knows \u201cThe Wizard of Oz,\u201d it\u2019s an early hint that the show is destined for a happier-than-expected ending.<\/p>\n
You could say it was an auspicious sign, then, that the skies opened up right before Idina Menzel took the stage at Blossom Music Center on Sunday, July 26, even as the rain persisted throughout her first several numbers.<\/p>\n
A distinctive voice in theater and film for three decades now, Menzel has a characteristic way of transforming any setback into a kind of encouragement \u2014 a power ranging well beyond her Tony Award-winning turn as Broadway\u2019s original Elphaba.<\/p>\n
That defiance has been there from the start, beginning with her breakout role as the protest-and-performance artist Maureen in the rock musical \u201cRent.\u201d She\u2019s navigated the tension between fear and fearlessness ever since, belting out anthem after anthem, none more potent than \u201cLet It Go\u201d from Disney\u2019s \u201cFrozen.\u201d<\/p>\n
It takes chutzpah to pack an entire career of showstopping hits into a single concert \u2014 accompanied by The Cleveland Orchestra, no less. If there were a few rough patches to weather during Sunday\u2019s performance (some fumbled lyrics, shouted phrases, and issues with sound balance), Menzel nonetheless gained strength with every song and ended the evening on a signature high note.<\/p>\n
That climax, of course, was the soaring battle cry from \u201cDefying Gravity,\u201d which she delivered with a raw force that\u2019s simply unmatched by anyone else (movie version of \u201cWicked\u201d included). No encore was necessary after such a bring-down-the-house finale.<\/p>\n
And to be fair, Menzel had exhausted her hit catalog by then. Earlier in the program, she made a full production out of \u201cLet It Go,\u201d introducing the number with that infamous recorded clip of John Travolta mispronouncing her name at the 2014 Academy Awards. (\u201cPlease welcome the wickedly talented \u2026 Adele Dazeem.\u201d) A dramatic reenactment of her inner monologue followed, all building up to the song itself.<\/p>\n
Whenever possible, Menzel encouraged audience participation, holding her mic out to the crowd during the big repeated choruses. Having dispatched Maureen\u2019s verses of \u201cTake Me or Leave Me,\u201d she naturally invited several fans onstage to finish the duet. Everyone in the pavilion and on the lawn would soon get to share in the \u201cRent\u201d love, singing and waving their cellphone flashlights along to \u201cNo Day But Today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Menzel has something of a rock star\u2019s presence, which can\u2019t always be contained by musical theater. If you asked her for a tune from \u201cAnnie,\u201d she might give you an aching pop ballad (Annie Lennox\u2019s \u201cWhy\u201d), a nimble jazz standard (Annie Ross\u2019s \u201cTwisted\u201d), or a Broadway chestnut about how the sun\u2019ll come out (\u201cTomorrow\u201d). We heard all three at Blossom, in arrangements that tended to favor Menzel\u2019s four-piece rhythm section situated at the front of the stage.<\/p>\n
In fact, even the musical theater selections more often leaned pop \u2014 whether they were conceived as contemporary (a synth-driven track from Menzel\u2019s latest Broadway show, \u201cRedwood\u201d) or just thoroughly modernized (a medley of \u201cThere\u2019s No Business Like Show Business,\u201d \u201cAnything Goes,\u201d and \u201cEverything\u2019s Coming Up Roses\u201d).<\/p>\n
But there was a good dose of Golden Age theater on the concert\u2019s all-instrumental first half, with guest conductor Andy Einhorn leading the Orchestra in a rumble with Leonard Bernstein\u2019s Symphonic Dances from \u201cWest Side Story.\u201d Not many singers could successfully follow a 25-minute orchestral storm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio \u2014 Misfortune almost strikes during Act 1 of the musical \u201cWicked\u201d when Elphaba, the future Wicked Witch of the West, gets caught mid-song in a rain shower. Funnily enough, she doesn\u2019t melt. For an audience that knows \u201cThe Wizard of Oz,\u201d it\u2019s an early hint […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1438,"comment_status":"closed","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":[10],"tags":[89],"class_list":["post-1437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-89"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/NOBCP7ZJVBHZFP2KDE4BVL5N6I-e1785419891924.avif","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Srnq-nb","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1437","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=1437"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1439,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1437\/revisions\/1439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}