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Music Review | Idina Menzel
Wicked Witch Bounces in Like a Bohemian Big Sister
When you are as closely identified with a role as Idina Menzel is with Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West in the Broadway musical “Wicked,” how do you step out of it into a concert without alienating your fans (in her case mostly girls and young women) who expect her to be a version of Elphaba? That was the question Ms. Menzel wrestled with in her eccentric concert on Wednesday evening at Town Hall, where she appeared with a drum-heavy rock quartet and two backup singers.
For much of the concert Ms. Menzel presented herself to her core audience as a flouncing bohemian older sister. Though she is 37, she acted like an impulsive teenager, kneeling or sitting on the stage much of the time. She took questions from the audience (she is a Gemini, she replied to the inevitable “What’s your sign?”) and delivered a heartfelt personal story about her younger sister, a single mother with two children, whom she described as a wonderful singer who never pursued a career because her family chose only one daughter to be an entertainer.
She also sang a prayer in Hebrew and recounted her amusing early adventures as a wedding singer on Long Island, when she sometimes worked with an Elvis impersonator. Her own wedding song, she said (she is married to the actor Taye Diggs), was “Time After Time.”
Midway in the concert, she momentarily turned into a rocker with a flailing rendition of the Police’s “Roxanne” (minus the reggae beat), tossing her hair, shaking her fist and pounding on the floor.
As the concert zigzagged here and there, the picture of Ms. Menzel that emerged was of an entertainer with a phenomenal voice in search of a coherent stage personality. Vocally she suggests a robust Diana Ross with 10 times the stamina and lung power; the resemblance is mostly in her vinegary timbre, especially in high notes. She cited Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan and Billie Holiday as role models, not Ms. Ross.
Ms. Menzel performed most of the songs from her newest album, “I Stand” (Warner Brothers), a collection of tuneful, assertive pop anthems composed with several writers including her producer, Glen Ballard, and delivered as full-bodied romantic war cries. Given the band’s straightforward but colorless arrangements, they came across as well made but anonymous formula power ballads that might sound more distinctive in softer, more carefully shaded settings. Elphaba’s signature song, “Defying Gravity,” closed the concert.
There was abundant talent on the stage, but no sign of the kind of oversight that might snap it into focus.
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