Some people will always think of Idina Menzel first and foremost as the sultry performance artist in \u201cRent\u201d who suckled from a giant, invisible udder and urged her audience to moo with her. Some associate Menzel more with her second giant role \u2014 the green and misunderstood \u201cWicked Witch\u201d Elphaba in \u201cWicked\u201d \u2014 and others simply know her as the demanding former coach of the glee club Vocal Adrenaline on \u201cGlee.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whatever the Tony-winning Broadway actress means to you, hearing her perform at the Columbus Commons is sure to leave a lasting impression. The Columbus Symphony\u2019s Picnic with the Pops series deserves props for bringing in a guest performer who is at the top of her game. Considering that she originated roles in two of the most popular musicals in recent history, Menzel could well go down in the books as one of the biggest theater stars of our time.<\/p>\n
The actress and mother of a toddler has spent the past several years touring the country and making occasional appearances on \u201cGlee.\u201d To her, the experience of performing with a new orchestra in a dozen cities is no different from returning to the same Broadway stage each day.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all about performing on stage in front of a live audience. It\u2019s all the same to me. It\u2019s the same adrenaline feeling,\u201d Menzel said during a recent call from her tour bus. Touring has its perks, though: \u201cI get to try different music and the audience really gets to know who I am personally, as opposed to a character.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her current tour kicked off following the release of her album \u201cIdina Menzel Live: Barefoot at the Symphony.\u201d But she toured the setlist from that recording for a year and a half beforehand, so she decided to revamp the list of show tunes and pop hits for this round of performances. Count on hearing her chat with the audience between her renditions of songs from \u201cRent\u201d and \u201cWicked,\u201d as well as one song she wrote herself, but she\u2019ll throw in some surprises, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, the concerts that I love the most are the ones where you walk away feeling like someone let you into a little window of their soul,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel like it\u2019s my responsibility to make myself vulnerable on stage and be as honest with my audience as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although Menzel was just cast as a lead in Disney\u2019s animated flick \u201cFrozen,\u201d she\u2019s eager to return to the stage in new productions based off original source material.<\/p>\n
\u201cI very much want to get back. I\u2019ve missed it so terribly,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve positioned myself to be in different pieces of work \u2014 productions that I\u2019m part of the creative process with the writers. Hopefully in the next year or two I\u2019ll be back.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some people will always think of Idina Menzel first and foremost as the sultry performance artist in \u201cRent\u201d who suckled from a giant, invisible udder and urged her audience to moo with her. Some associate Menzel more with her second giant role \u2014 the green and misunderstood \u201cWicked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":[2],"tags":[28,6],"class_list":["post-55","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews","tag-28","tag-barefoot-summer-tour-2012"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Srnq-T","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":334,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions\/334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}