The lights go down and Idina appears onstage with two drumsticks crossed above her head, starting the intro to Queen of Swords<\/i>. It feels like the entire audience is on first name terms with Idina as soon as she starts to speak, shading her eyes to look out into the audience and tell the Sony Centre \u201cI\u2019ve missed you Toronto\u201d.<\/p>\n
Early in the show Idina has a good friend join her for Seasons of Love<\/i>, Anthony Rapp, her former Rent <\/i>co-star, comes cantering down the aisle and is greeted with a huge roar and applause from the audience. The show is very Broadway, very Disney, with tracks from Rent, Wicked and Frozen as well as a generous helping from her latest album idina.<\/i>, an album that fits easily with the musical numbers.<\/p>\n
An on-the-nose wind machine kicks in for Wind Beneath My Wings<\/i>, demonstrating (if you haven\u2019t realised already) that this show is clearly all about embracing the sentimental joy of musicals. Defying Gravity<\/i> follows, and is capped off with I Do<\/i> \u2013 another track from idina.<\/i> which concludes with some dramatic ribbon dancing \u2013 it\u2019s more impressive than it sounds. There\u2019s a tenacity to Idina\u2019s movements that makes you believe she\u2019s still feeling everything in the song about a struggling marriage.<\/p>\n
Idina\u2019s voice is as spectacular as you\u2019d hope, holding impressively long and high notes and treating us to an acapella that, although quiet without a mic, is a hell of a thing to pull off. She\u2019s playful with the crowd, commenting with pleasure that Toronto is rowdier than expected, serenading the stage security and jokingly thanking them for being so serious and saving her from being bum-rushed by one of the many callers from the audience.<\/p>\n
Let It Go<\/i> is teased towards the end of the set with \u2018a song about sisters\u2019, an arrangement of The Beatles\u2019 Dear Prudence<\/i> combined with Do You Want to Build a Snowman<\/i>. For the finale of Let It Go<\/i>, Idina asks for any kids below a certain height to come down and help her sing the ending, becoming particularly attached to a dapper-dressed young man named Oliver who\u2019s favourite showtunes are from Wicked and a tiny girl called Naomi who is too shy to speak but says Anna is her favourite in frozen, to Idina\u2019s charming mock-chagrin.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m sure a more seasoned reviewer would have some eyes to roll for all the schmaltzy lyrics about love, but I found it all absolutely delightful. I didn\u2019t expect it, but Idina completely won me over.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Set List<\/p>\n
1.Queen of Swords<\/p>\n
2.Small World<\/p>\n
3.Seasons of Love (with Anthony Rapp)<\/p>\n
4.Don\u2019t Rain on My Parade<\/p>\n
5.Everybody Knows<\/p>\n
6.Cake<\/p>\n
7.I\u2019m Not That Girl<\/p>\n
8.Perfect Story<\/p>\n
9.Wind Beneath My Wings<\/p>\n
10.Defying gravity<\/p>\n
11.I Do<\/p>\n
12.Bridge Over Troubled Water<\/p>\n
13.Rock Steady<\/p>\n
14.No Day but Today<\/p>\n
15.Dear Prudence\/Do You Want to Build a Snowman<\/p>\n
16.For Good<\/p>\n
17.Let It Go<\/p>\n
18.Every Time We Say Goodbye<\/p>\n
19.I See You<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The lights go down and Idina appears onstage with two drumsticks crossed above her head, starting the intro to Queen of Swords. It feels like the entire audience is on first name terms with Idina as soon as she starts to speak, shading her eyes to look out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":698,"comment_status":"open","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":[45],"class_list":["post-697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-45"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/1-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Srnq-bf","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697","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=697"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":699,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697\/revisions\/699"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}