{"id":389,"date":"2015-10-23T01:30:59","date_gmt":"2015-10-23T01:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/?p=389"},"modified":"2015-10-23T01:31:51","modified_gmt":"2015-10-23T01:31:51","slug":"idina-menzel-defying-gravity-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/idina-menzel-defying-gravity-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Idina Menzel, defying gravity again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Idina Menzel knows a thing or two about charmed lives. She is, after all, the original Elphaba, the green-skinned witch of \u201cWicked,\u201d the megahit Broadway musical that earned her a Tony Award and the adoration of theatergoers young and old who wished for a voice that might, like hers, hit that impossibly high F in Elphaba\u2019s anthem, \u201cDefying Gravity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That wasn\u2019t the first spell she cast on Broadway, however. To even the most casual \u201cRent\u201d-head, she\u2019s known for her socko turn as Maureen, the bisexual baby doll who fills out catsuits and rocks out with girlfriend Joanne to the hormone-stoking harmonies of \u201cTake Me or Leave Me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It is a remarkable pedigree, the envy of any actress with a show tune in her heart and the lung power to belt it. To have originated not one, but two such roles, at the ages of 24 and 32, in an era when juicy new parts in musical-theater are as rare as red diamonds, is an achievement that accords her membership in a most exclusive club. And now, as she prepares to meet audiences at Washington\u2019s National Theatre for the world premiere of a new musical headed for Broadway by a pair of Pulitzer-winning songwriters, the situation that confronts Menzel has musical lovers asking: Can she make it three?<\/p>\n<p>The show, \u201cIf\/Then,\u201d is not only that most exotic of D.C. theater events \u2014 a commercial Broadway tryout \u2014 but also one of the most eagerly anticipated musicals of the season in New York, where it is scheduled to begin performances in March. First, though, it has to get on its feet here, in a month-long run beginning Tuesday that will start to gauge whether \u201cIf\/Then\u2019s\u201d creators, the \u201cNext to Normal\u201d team of composer Tom Kitt, lyricist Brian Yorkey and director Michael Greif, have fashioned a hit, or still have a lot of work to do.<\/p>\n<p>True to their artistic natures, Kitt and Yorkey have assembled a musical with thinking-person\u2019s themes and an inventive structure, a two-headed plot that takes its lead character through two competing realities. To mitigate concerns about audiences navigating the plots, lighting and other technical elements have been developed to help define the distinct story lines. No one is surprised, though, that these longtime collaborators have devised the work as a tantalizing maze. \u201cNext to Normal,\u201d which like \u201cIf\/Then\u201d made an early developmental stop in Washington, was the tale set to music of a family convulsed by bipolar illness. Although the musical defied expectations and ran for 733 performances, it was not the most obvious candidate for box office briskness.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"400\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/video\/c\/embed\/30a551ce-425b-11e3-a751-f032898f2dbc\" frameborder=\"0\" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Above the title<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf\/Then\u201d is built around the life of a 40-ish urban planner named Elizabeth, who leaves Phoenix and settles back into life in Manhattan, where the musical forks into alternate narratives, one taking her on a career-intensive path, the other on the road to love and family. It\u2019s a valentine to New York and a contemplation of the choices one makes, what they lead to, what they close off: \u201cSome Other Me\u201d is the title of one \u201cIf\/Then\u201d ballad, a song redolent of the musical\u2019s wistful sense of life\u2019s shifting, overlapping possibilities.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s also an apt enough number for Menzel herself, an earthy, no-nonsense Long Island girl who at one time envisioned a far different path, in the recording industry, and who through some amazing strokes of luck and displays of talent wound up on Broadway playing lesbian heartbreakers and misunderstood witches.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI understand how fortunate I was to be in those other shows,\u201d Menzel is saying, as she sinks into a banquette in a Times Square bar after a recent day of rehearsals. She\u2019s highly aware of the enviable parameters of her working life, which brings her back to Broadway for the first time since she left \u201cWicked\u201d in 2005. \u201cIt\u2019s this weird dichotomy of living your dream, and just going to the office.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And even more keenly, she\u2019s conscious of the new, hot spotlight in which \u201cIf\/Then\u201d casts her. For she returns at age 42 as the show\u2019s absolute center of gravity, her name emblazoned above the title, her likeness front and center in the ads. The hope, of course, is that all those fans who grew up with her, who know her from \u201cRent\u201d and \u201cWicked,\u201d her stints as Rachel\u2019s mother on \u201cGlee\u201d and Amy Adams\u2019s rival in \u201cEnchanted,\u201d will line up to see her in \u201cIf\/Then,\u201d too. She\u2019s also one of the voices in the new Disney animated musical \u201cFrozen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI understand the pressure of selling tickets,\u201d she says. \u201cI can feel that hanging over my head.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>A winding road to Broadway<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a grownup\u2019s sort of challenge, fitting for this juncture in Menzel\u2019s own trajectory, as she juggles the responsibilities of mom (to 4-year-old Walker), wife (to heartthrob actor and fellow \u201cRent\u201d alumnus Taye Diggs) and performer. Her allies in the business see a connection between the woman she\u2019s evolved into and the actress she\u2019s become, and observe how well she integrates the intense experiences she\u2019s had onstage into the more ordinary contortions of offstage existence.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe experience of \u2018Wicked\u2019 changed her, which of course it would,\u201d says David Stone, producer of \u201cWicked\u201d and \u201cIf\/Then\u201d and a Menzel confidant. \u201cThe level of attention to her performance and the award were big. But the bigger thing for me was watching her grow on the side of her life that was happening alongside \u2018Wicked.\u2019 The navigating of personal relationships, figuring out the balance, when to follow your dream, when to have a child, figuring out priorities and life decisions. It wasn\u2019t so much what was going on inside the Gershwin [Theatre], it was what was going on on the outside.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Maturity comes up a lot in conversations about Menzel, who divides her time between Los Angeles and New York, and keeps Walker as priority No. 1: even in Manhattan, she gets in the car every morning and drives him downtown to preschool. With Diggs shooting a TV series in L.A., Walker is with Menzel (and a nanny) in Washington, too.<\/p>\n<p>The impression of solid citizen carries over into her work. \u201cShe was the epitome of the natural when we first met her,\u201d says Greif, who cast and directed her in \u201cRent.\u201d \u201cThings came easily. Now you see that in addition to that naturalness, there\u2019s real craft and real technique. And she so clearly loves this process and she lets this process be elastic and bold. She\u2019s considered, and yet not careful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Still, Menzel harbors some insecurities, too, the result in part of the bruises one inevitably acquires in her field, as well as a conviction that she has not enjoyed the same critical embrace as some of her peers. A failure to take off as a singer-songwriter in the recording industry \u2014 her first label dropped her after poor sales \u2014 left a mark, as did the New York Times review of \u201cWicked,\u201d which bestowed a larger crown on the performance of Menzel\u2019s co-star Kristin Chenoweth. (Though friends say the tension between them has been exaggerated, there was an unavoidable rivalry that intensified after Menzel bested Chenoweth for the best-actress Tony.)<\/p>\n<p>She says that she\u2019s learned quite a lot over the years about what\u2019s right for her. When I first interviewed her back in March 1996, just after \u201cRent\u201d opened to huzzahs off-Broadway, she was iffy about a life in the theater, explaining that she had her own rock band and that having a \u201clegit career\u201d made it \u201cdifficult\u201d to be taken seriously in rock.<\/p>\n<p>At this account, Menzel scrunches her face into a look that says, \u201cwhat was I thinking?\u201d \u201cThe truth is I love musical theater, and always have. I love singing very expressively, with lots of emotionality and in pop and rock, they make you tone it down,\u201d she says. \u201cIt took getting dropped from a record label, it took struggling after \u2018Rent\u2019, to realize I love it here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Growing up<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Menzel grew up in white-collar Woodbury, N.Y., a kid who got good grades and had an outstanding voice, but whose mom, over Menzel\u2019s pleas, wanted her to build a childhood rather than a r\u00e9sum\u00e9. \u201cOne day, she saw a mother drag a girl off a camp bus to take her to a commercial audition,\u201d Menzel says of her mother. That was that. Instead, Menzel took singing lessons and sang in choirs, and when she was a teenager was hired as a wedding singer. The gigs were the opposite of cheesy; they gave her a musical education, as she learned to perform jazz standards in the manner of the greats: Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan. (Years later, when she molded her concert tours, she relied on all the work she did, mimicking the legends at those Long Island nuptials.)<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou start to emulate them,\u201d she says. \u201cYour ear helps you imitate them, and then you begin to see where your own impetus is.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe was incredibly talented and beautiful,\u201d says Adam Pascal, who lived around the corner from Menzel, was a year ahead of her at Syosset High and, in the wildest of career convergences, ended up her co-star of \u201cRent.\u201d What were the odds of that pair of voices emerging from the same suburban neighborhood?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe was really popular, he got all the girls and smoked at the back of the bus,\u201d recalls Menzel.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBy painting me as cool, she\u2019s glamorizing the reality,\u201d Pascal, speaking by phone from California, replies, laughing. All through NYU, she dated a friend of Pascal\u2019s, and when she got the part in \u201cRent,\u201d the friend called Pascal to say they were looking for a guy with a rock voice. \u201cI thought, \u2018Idina\u2019s in it. What\u2019s the worst that can happen?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRent\u201d would be a seminal experience, not in the least because it brought Menzel into the orbit of Greif, who would prove to be a faithful mentor and the antithesis of the artificiality she\u2019s found in some other aspects of her working life: \u201cYou think you\u2019re best friends, and you never hear from anyone,\u201d she says. To have Greif\u2019s loyalty, she adds, \u201creinforces my faith in the business.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Greif and Stone had Menzel in mind from the start for \u201cIf\/Then,\u201d an enterprise in which she is reunited with another \u201cRent\u201d original, Anthony Rapp. (LaChanze, a Tony winner for the musical adaptation of \u201cThe Color Purple,\u201d is also in the cast.) \u201cWith all of us from the original cast, there\u2019s that tremendous connection that we all had \u2014 it\u2019s been, \u2018pick up where we left off,\u2019\u200a\u201d Rapp says. Everyone had to grow up quickly in the early days of that show, especially after its creator, 35-year-old Jonathan Larson, died unexpectedly of a heart ailment right before opening night.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can\u2019t overstate what trust means in our work,\u201d Rapp says of working again with Menzel \u2014 they play best friends in the musical. \u201cTrusting not that she\u2019s just a good person, but that onstage every night, I have absolute trust and faith that we will be present for each other.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Having a chance to watch Menzel and Rapp rehearse a scene together, in a Manhattan studio overlooking West 42nd Street, reminds you of their shared history \u2014 and of time passing. The scene leading up to their duet in \u201cSome Other Me\u201d requires a young actress to approach Rapp, who plays an author named Lucas, and declare to him, \u201cYou are proof you don\u2019t have to give up on your ideals when you get old.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The characters in \u201cRent\u201d are forever young. Actors are not. And yet it\u2019s reassuring to reacquaint oneself with familiar ones and see that time does not have to be unkind to them. Menzel has had her share of good times on the stage, and no matter which path \u201cIf\/Then\u201d follows, she pronounces herself pleased with the road she\u2019s on and the company she\u2019s in.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m smart enough,\u201d she explains, \u201cto know to work with smart people.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Idina Menzel knows a thing or two about charmed lives. She is, after all, the original Elphaba, the green-skinned witch of \u201cWicked,\u201d the megahit Broadway musical that earned her a Tony Award and the adoration of theatergoers young and old who wished for a voice that might, like [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":392,"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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[39,41,7,40],"class_list":["post-389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-39","tag-before-fame","tag-career","tag-ifthen"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/defyinggravity.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Srnq-6h","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":391,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389\/revisions\/391"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}