Arts & Entertainment
Menzel’s magic
Broadway powerhouse brings summer tour to Wolf Trap next week
Singer Idina Menzel balances motherhood, touring, Broadway and Hollywood in a busy career but says she enjoys the concerts most. (Photo courtesy Concord Music Group)
‘An Evening with Idina Menzel’
Aug. 3, 8:15 p.m.
Wolf Trap Filene Center
1551 Trap Rd.
Vienna, VA
Tickets range from $20 (lawn) to $100 (orchestra pit)
Idinamenzel.com
Pretty much any veteran live performer will say they have some little personal “trick” they use to keep their most oft-performed material fresh. For Idina Menzel and her trademark “Wicked” showstopper “Defying Gravity,” it’s sometimes a gay teen — perhaps with a little projecting — that helps get her through the song.
Well, that and what she describes as kind of obligation she has to the star-making material.
“That song is a personal gift to me,” she says. “I have a personal debt I owe to that music. Because I have to sing it so much, people ask if it gets monotonous. I can truthfully say that doesn’t happen because every time I sing it, I come from a different place. It could be the young 14-year-old boy in the front row singing it along with me who may not have come out yet. I know how much the song means to him, so I can sing it to him that night. I think it’s a testament to how well written a song it is that it can speak to so many different people.”
Menzel brings her summer tour to Wolf Trap next week for her only D.C.-area appearance. The Tony winner, who’s become a household name since she debuted in “Rent” in 1996 and later in “Wicked” in 2003, also varies her set list slightly from city to city, another show-freshening trick she swears by. She’ll perform in Virginia with the National Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Steven Reineke.
“I’m excited about the show not only because of the material I’m doing, but because I feel like I’ve found a way to make every city have a show that’s unique to them,” Menzel, 41, says. “People should know when they come to see the show they can leave feeling like they got to know a little piece of who I am and it’s not the same everywhere. Every city’s just a little bit different.”
“I’ve been doing it with the symphony for almost three years already, which I truly love. It’s been a wonderful experience for me, which is why I continue to do it,” Menzel says. “There’s an intimacy I’m able to maintain even though I have all these musicians behind me. I had to strike a balance with it early on. It was a little bit of work for me to figure out how to do that, but now it’s pretty natural and organic.”
Even after appearing in two seasons of “Glee” and in films like “Rent” and Disney’s “Enchanted,” Menzel still finds singing live to be her favorite brand of performance.
“I definitely thrive off of the live audience and the adrenaline of being in the moment,” she says.
In 2009, Menzel had her first child, son Walker, with fellow Broadway actor and husband Taye Diggs. Before motherhood, Menzel had a strict regimen for keeping her vocals up, but now being more flexible with her schedule as a mother has only enhanced her performance experiences, she says.
“The more I sing the better for me. I’m like a marathon runner as far as running everyday. So that’s kind of how I approach it — athletically. And I’m just finding that being a mom and having a little boy now has changed my whole perspective on that. I used to have such a ritual and routine that I still try to keep, but if I deviate from it I’m a little less hard on myself, and in return I feel like the rewards are greater for me professionally. I may not be as prepared vocally, but then I’m on stage and I feel more free.”
Menzel’s summer tour includes old favorites from her roles on Broadway in “Wicked” and “Rent,” as well as other hits featured in her concert “Barefoot at the Symphony” that aired on PBS and has now been released on DVD.
“There are a few songs I wouldn’t leave stage without singing. I’m constantly changing [the set list], trying to tell different stories,” Menzel says. “It’s half and half music people would expect and the other stuff is new stuff I want to challenge myself with.”
Looking back, Menzel finds that she was in very different places in life during her appearances on “Glee” in the show’s first and third seasons. She was still adjusting to being a mom while filming the first season, but during the filming of the third season was more used to juggling parenthood and her career.
“The last season I was on I enjoyed it a lot more. I was learning how to balance motherhood and work for myself. I was enjoying the cast and I didn’t have to run home every second to pump my boobs or whatever,” Menzel says. “I hope [the cast] are all really appreciating it and enjoying it in the moment because you can easily lose sight of how incredible it is. I would love to do more TV, but my definitive wish was to get back to New York and do another show.”
In addition to touring, Menzel is working on a number of projects. She’s working alongside composers of original pieces for new musicals to act as a “muse,” singing and doing readings of their work so they can hear the results of their writing. She’s also thrilled to start work as Elsa in a new Disney movie called “Frozen” set for release in 2013.
“It’s amazing for me, like a dream,” she says. “It’s an animated Disney movie and there’s lots of music in it. It’s a beautiful story, and we just got started.”
And yes, as clichéd as it might sound for a Broadway powerhouse, Menzel is aware and appreciative of her gay following.
“I did the Atlantis cruise ship with 1,000 gay men and I had probably the greatest time I’ve ever had,” she says.
Though on one hand she says it makes no difference — “an audience is an audience, made up of all different kinds of people” — she says the gay kids who tell her “Wicked” helped them come out mean a lot.
“All that kind of stuff is part of the benefits I reap from what I do for a living. It enriches me as a person and I feel like everyone’s in it together out there.”
Gay conductor to lead NSO for Menzel show
By BRIAN T. CARNEY
Steven Reineke conducts for Idina Menzel next week at Wolf Trap. (Photo by Michael Tammaro)
Maestro Steven Reineke says his friend Idina Menzel wouldn’t want him to say too much about what she’ll be singing at their upcoming performance with the National Symphony Orchestra at Wolf Trap.
But he does mention, “She covers a lot of material in her set. And she tells great stories. She’s very interactive with the audience. There’s even some audience participation.”
He’s more forthcoming about the first half of the program, which will start with one of his own compositions. The gay composer and conductor wrote “Celebration Fanfare” when he was 25 (he turns 42 in September) and notes that the piece is still performed frequently by orchestras and concert bands across the country. The work is dedicated to Erich Kunzel, conductor of the Cincinnati Pops, who served as a mentor to Reineke and encouraged his career as both composer and conductor.
Reineke resisted the temptation to start the evening with his own version of “Defying Gravity,” though Reineke’s piece was written to celebrate another kind of flight — the centennial of the Wright Brother flight. He says it’s a funny coincidence that Broadway composer Stephen Schwartz used the same title for the Act I finale of “Wicked,” a number that has become a signature piece for Menzel.
“We just happened to come up with the same title. They have nothing to do with each other whatsoever,” he says.
Reineke started composing when he was a teenager. He remembers, “I had all this music running around my head. I started to plunk things out on the piano because I just needed to get these songs out. It wasn’t really a conscious choice.”
It was also about that time he realized he was gay.
”I came out to myself when I was 17 years old, a senior in high school getting ready to go off to college. I’ll never forget having that cathartic moment when I stared in the mirror and said the words out loud, ‘I am gay.’ That was the hardest part about the process.”
As he began his professional life, Reineke remained open about his sexuality and says it was “a no brainer” because “I was never really in. The more notoriety I got, the more it came up, and I’m just not the kind of person to deny it. I just treat it as a very normal part of life. There was no big coming out.”
Reineke isn’t sure why the “classical closet” (cultural critic K. Robert Schwarz’s term for the dearth of classical musicians who are openly LGBT) still persists so strongly. He does note, “I do wish that more people would treat is as a non-issue, whether they’re in the arts, or sports figures, or television or whatever.”
Staying in the closet, he says, only perpetuates myths.
“That’s one thing that keeps the stigma about it. People staying buried instead of saying, ‘Here I am, deal with it.’”
His sexuality has not played a major role in his musical career. As a composer, he often takes his cue from the visual and visceral imagery he finds in mythology and nature. Reineke, who initially wanted to be a film composer, says he needs a visual image in mind before he starts composing: “Basically I’m creating a soundtrack to my own movie in my own head.”
As a conductor and music director (he’s also music director of the New York Pops and the principal pops conductor for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra here in Washington), Reineke says his focus is on the audience and the musicians.
“I have no particular agenda other than the health and success of the orchestra and the good times had by an audience.”
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
It’s been a year filled with drama and music, re-imaginings and new works. There was a lot on offer in 2025, and much to enjoy. Here are 10 now-closed productions that come to mind.
On Valentine’s Day at Folger Theatre on Capitol Hill, out actor Holly Twyford served as narrator for “The Love Birds” a Folger Consort work that melds medieval music with a world-premiere composition by acclaimed composer Juri Seo and readings from Geoffrey Chaucer’s “A Parlement of Foules”
Standing behind a podium, Twyford beautifully read Chaucer’s words (translated from Middle English and backed by projected slides in the original language), alternating with music played on old and new instruments.
While Mosaic Theater’s “A Case for the Existence of God,” closed in mid-December, it’s proving a production not soon forgotten. Precisely staged by Danilo Gambini, and impressively acted by Lee Orsorio and Jaysen Wright, the soul-searching two hander by out playwright Samuel D. Hunter, tells the story of two men who form an unlikely friendship based on single-fatherhood, a specific sadness, and hope.
The action unfolds in a small office in southern Idaho, where the pair discuss the perplexing terms of a mortgage loan while delving deep into their lives and backgrounds. Nothing is left off the table.
Shakespeare Theatre Company’s spring production of “Uncle Vanya” gave audiences something both fresh yet enduring. Staged by STC’s artistic director Simon Godwin, the production put an impeccably pleasing twist on Russian playwright Anton Chekhov’s classic. It ranks among the very best area productions of the year.
Featuring a topnotch cast led by Hugh Bonneville (TV’s “Downton Abbey”) in the title role, the play was set on an unfinished stage cluttered with costume racks and assorted props, all assembled by crew uniformed in black and actors in street clothes. Throughout the drama tinged with comedy, the actors continued to assist with ever increasingly period set changes accompanied by an underscore of melancholic cello strings. It was innovative and wonderful.
GALA Hispanic Theatre’s production of Manuel Puig’s “Kiss of the Spider Woman” was an intimate and affecting piece of theater. Staged by José Luis Arellano, it starred out actors Rodrigo Pedreira and Martín Ruiz as two very different men whose paths cross as convicts in an Argentine prison.
Arena Stage scored with a re-imagined and updated take on the widely liked musical “Damn Yankees.” Directed by Sergio Trujillo, the Broadway bound production has been “gently re-tooled for its first major revival in the 21st century,” moving the action from the struggling Washington Senators baseball team to the turn-of-the-century Yankees lineup. Ana Villafañe’s charmingly seductive Lola and a chorus of fit ball players made for a good time.
Also at Arena, out playwright Reggie D. White’s new work “Fremont Ave.” was very well received. A semi-autobiographical glimpse into home and the many definitions of that idea specifically relating to three generations of Black men, the work boasts a third act with a deeply queer storyline to boot.
Before his smash hit “Hamilton” transformed Broadway, Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote “In the Heights,” a seminal musical set against the vicissitudes of an upper Manhattan bodega. Infused with hip-hop, rap, and pop ballads, the romance/dramedy takes place over a lively few days in the vibrant, close-knit Latin neighborhood, Washington Heights.
Signature Theatre’s exciting take on “In the Heights” featured a talented cast including out actor Ángel Lozado as the bodega owner who figures prominently in the barrio and the action.
Studio Theatre’s recent production of lesbian playwright Paula Vogel’s newest work “The Mother Play,” a drama with humor, is about a well put together alcoholic mother and her two gay children living under difficult circumstances in the less glitzy parts of suburban Maryland. With nuanced performances and smart direction, the production was terrific.
Keegan Theatre surpassed expectations with its production of “Lizzie” a punk rock opera about Miss Borden, the fabled axe wielding title character. Performed by a super all-female cast, they belted a score that hits hard on subjects like money, queerness, and strained (to say the least) family relationships.
Round House Theatre impressed autumn audiences with “The Inheritance,” a two-part drama sensitively staged by out director Tom Story and acted by a mostly queer cast that included young actor Jordi Bertrán Ramírez in a breakout performance.
Penned by out playwright Matthew López, the epic work inspired by E.M. Forster’s novel “Howards End,” explores themes of love, legacy, and the AIDS crisis through the lives of three generations of gay men in New York City.
Prior to opening, Story commented that with the production’s predominately queer cast you get actors who “really understand the situation, the humor, and the struggle. It works well.” And he was right.
This past year, you’ve often had to make do.
Saving money here, resources there, being inventive and innovative. It’s a talent you’ve honed, but isn’t it time to have the best? Yep, so grab these Ten Best of 2025 books for your new year pleasures.
Nonfiction
Health care is on everyone’s mind now, and “A Living: Working-Class Americans Talk to Their Doctor” by Michael D. Stein, M.D. (Melville House, $26.99) lets you peek into health care from the point of view of a doctor who treats “front-line workers” and those who experience poverty and homelessness. It’s shocking, an eye-opening book, a skinny, quick-to-read one that needs to be read now.
If you’ve been doing eldercare or caring for any loved one, then “How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter’s Memoir” by Molly Jong-Fast (Viking, $28) needs to be in your plans for the coming year. It’s a memoir, but also a biography of Jong-Fast’s mother, Erica Jong, and the story of love, illness, and living through the chaos of serious disease with humor and grace. You’ll like this book especially if you were a fan of the author’s late mother.
Another memoir you can’t miss this year is “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: A Veteran’s Memoir” by Khadijah Queen (Legacy Lit, $30.00). It’s the story of one woman’s determination to get out of poverty and get an education, and to keep her head above water while she goes below water by joining the U.S. Navy. This is a story that will keep you glued to your seat, all the way through.
Self-improvement is something you might think about tackling in the new year, and “Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy” by Mary Roach (W.W. Norton & Company, $28.99) is a lighthearted – yet real and informative – look at the things inside and outside your body that can be replaced or changed. New nose job? Transplant, new dental work? Learn how you can become the Bionic Person in real life, and laugh while you’re doing it.
The science lover inside you will want to read “The Grave Robber: The Biggest Stolen Artifacts Case in FBI History and the Bureau’s Quest to Set Things Right” by Tim Carpenter (Harper Horizon, $29.99). A history lover will also want it, as will anyone with a craving for true crime, memoir, FBI procedural books, and travel books. It’s the story of a man who spent his life stealing objects from graves around the world, and an FBI agent’s obsession with securing the objects and returning them. It’s a fascinating read, with just a little bit of gruesome thrown in for fun.
Fiction
Speaking of a little bit of scariness, “Don’t Forget Me, Little Bessie” by James Lee Burke (Atlantic Monthly Press, $28) is the story of a girl named Bessie and her involvement with a cloven-hooved being who dogs her all her life. Set in still-wild south Texas, it’s a little bit western, part paranormal, and completely full of enjoyment.
“Evensong” by Stewart O’Nan (Atlantic Monthly Press, $28) is a layered novel of women’s friendships as they age together and support one another. The characters are warm and funny, there are a few times when your heart will sit in your throat, and you won’t be sorry you read it. It’s just plain irresistible.
If you need a dark tale for what’s left of a dark winter season, then “One of Us” by Dan Chaon (Henry Holt, $28), it it. It’s the story of twins who become orphaned when their Mama dies, ending up with a man who owns a traveling freak show, and who promises to care for them. But they can’t ever forget that a nefarious con man is looking for them; those kids can talk to one another without saying a word, and he’s going to make lots of money off them. This is a sharp, clever novel that fans of the “circus” genre shouldn’t miss.
“When the Harvest Comes” by Denne Michele Norris (Random House, $28) is a wonderful romance, a boy-meets-boy with a little spice and a lot of strife. Davis loves Everett but as their wedding day draws near, doubts begin to creep in. There’s homophobia on both sides of their families, and no small amount of racism. Beware that there’s some light explicitness in this book, but if you love a good love story, you’ll love this.
Another layered tale you’ll enjoy is “The Elements” by John Boyne (Henry Holt, $29.99), a twisty bunch of short stories that connect in a series of arcs that begin on an island near Dublin. It’s about love, death, revenge, and horror, a little like The Twilight Zone, but without the paranormal. You won’t want to put down, so be warned.
If you need more ideas, head to your local library or bookstore and ask the staff there for their favorite reads of 2025. They’ll fill your book bag and your new year with goodness.
Season’s readings!
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A look back at the best books of 2025
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