With 'I Stand', Idina Menzel relishes return to the stage

You know and love Idina Menzel for her Tony-winning turns as the bisexual performance artist Maureen in the groundbreaking musical Rent or as the earnest Elphaba in the beloved musical Wicked(based on the book by local out author Gregory Maguire, btw). More recently, she starred alongside Patrick Dempsey and Amy Adams in the Disney gem Enchanted, just out on DVD. Now, Menzel is putting her pipes to work in the service of her own material, having penned nine of the ten tracks on her first full-length CD, I Stand, a lush collection of pop tunes about love, loss and transformation that give an intimate glimpse into Menzel's beautiful mind. She'll be performing cuts from the new disc during her April 3 show at the Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield. Sure, it's haul to Western Mass., but judging from a few spins of I Stand, it'll be well worth the trip. We recently caught up with Menzel to chat - despite a bad phone connection - about her new disc, her iconic Broadway roles and Wicked's bad rap.

Laura Kiritsy: You've written most of the songs on your new CD and will be performing them onstage. Most folks know you for singing other people's songs. Is there a difference performing your own material?
Idina Menzel: Oh, of course. It's a much more vulnerable place to be. It's, you know they're very personal intimate experiences in my life and I'm putting myself out there in front of everyone.

You know, I'm so sorry. It's so hard to hear you, it might be where I'm up in the hills of California and the static is ... let me try to move. Okay go ahead.

LK: Do you want me to talk a little louder, is this better?
IM:If you don't mind.

LK: I don't mind but the rest of my office might.
IM:What you're doing now is good.

LK: You've been living with these songs for a long time although we're just kind of hearing them for the first time. What's your favorite song from the disc to perform right now?
IM:You know, I'd say I'm looking forward to performing in general because when you spend so much time in the studio it gets very secluded and reclusive and I miss being onstage. So the whole thing is exciting for me. I'm just really looking forward to connecting with an audience again.

LK: Enchanted just came out on DVD. I loved the movie but I felt a little ripped off that you didn't sing in the film.
IM:Everyone says that [laughs].

LK: What happened?
IM:You know, when it was offered to me, it was just a speaking role, it had no music in it. So they actually tried to write some music for it once they hired me, feeling a responsibility to me for that reason. But it was contrived. I was actually really honored to be invited to be a part of that movie as an actress and on my acting merits alone. Often in musical theater we ... get pigeonholed and people think we can't be honest without singing.

LK:It was interesting because I've seen you onstage in Wicked and not that your character in Enchanted was evil, but you weren't the nice lovable Amy Adams character.
IM:Right.

LK: That was kind of jarring for me. You're character in Wicked was much more vulnerable and likable.
IM:I tried to make her likable in Enchanted. ... Those parts are often written stereotypically bitchy and the director and I thought it was important to try to play against it, so that Patrick Dempsey's character has a harder decision to make. So I tried to find some likable qualities about her, and just the fact that she's really an idealist and really, really a romantic at heart and just kind of hiding behind all this bravado.

LK: I've seen the documentary Show Business -
IM:Oh, right.

LK: That chronicled the birth of Wicked and some other shows. What was it like for you to be going through all in front of the cameras when you didn't know how the show would turn out?
IM:Yeah, I don't remember a lot of the cameras being there. I probably was just so nervous about doing a good job in rehearsal and figuring out my character. I mean the whole experience is such a whirlwind that I had a lot to focus on [laughs.] I will say that as much as I think that movie has a lot of good qualities I do resent the fact that Wicked sort of gets the label as the big-budget movie, as though it had no substance. Because something cost more to make doesn't mean it have a great story and I think it's obvious now. I mean, the thing's selling all over the world and breaking records everywhere that you know there's something very special about it. And it has in its core a beautiful story. And I just think because young people respond to it and it's lots of money that it gets a stigma of ... having less depth than it really does. And I felt like in that documentary we were the big bad wolf with the big money producers and they just needed to label us as that in order to make sense of the documentary. I don't agree with that.

LK: I totally tuned all that part out because I liked the show so much and didn't find it to be lacking in substance at all.
IM:Right.

LK: There's something distinctly queer about Elphaba -
IM:Queer?

LK: Yeah.
IM:I love that you say that.

LK: I've interviewed Gregory Maguire who told me that his experience growing up as a gay man influenced Wicked and other books that he's written and the characters as far as them being outsiders or misunderstood people. Did you connect those dots?
IM:I did for me, yeah, in my own life, of course. You know, I think we all experience that in one way or another when we're younger feeling like an outcast, feeling like we don't belong, feeling unattractive. And for me especially, I always had this sense of my talent and my power as an individual but I was afraid to show it because I didn't want to stand out too much or have any of the other kids feel like I was being competitive or cause them to be jealous of me so I kept it inside for a long time and I always sympathized with Elphaba because of that. Especially as a woman when you have all this power and these gifts and they just trying to come out. Sometimes they come out in the wrong way and people misunderstand you and I think that's what life's about is trying to harness your power and use it in the most fantastic of ways and as you get older not caring about what people think and letting it shine through.

Q: Wow. So if you felt like that growing it must have been really liberating to play that role.
IM:Definitely [laughs]. It did, but I had started to what's the word I'm thinking of - reconcile with those emotions a lot earlier, like when I went to college. You know I said okay this is what I want to do, this is what I'm good at, I'm not going to apologize for myself anymore and I'm gonna go for this. It was more growing up in Long Island through middle school and all that, not wanting to push people away thinking that I was showing off.

LK: I just have a couple other questions. How do you feel about Rent closing down?
IM:I feel really sad about it. There's good and there's bad. It's sad for me because it's an era of my life that I mean so much has gone on for me, I mean I met my husband [co-star Taye Diggs] in Rent, I met [Rent creator] Jonathan Larson and I, like the rest of the cast, have sort of taken the torch, held the torch to carry on his legacy and his message and his heart and soul in this show and we felt a tremendous responsibility about doing that for all these years. So it's sad because ... you know, it's done so much for young generations and young kids who have struggled with their own sexuality and to really have something to identify with.

And yet now, apparently once you close on Broadway, you are more available to high schools licensing the show, I guess, to do it in more regional incarnations. And so I think that would incredible when high schools start to grapple with this material and teachers are discussing it in school, it's gonna have such a really wonderful effect with these kids that I've grown up meeting and watching. I'm relieved in a way that they'll have something to identify with and that it will bring it to the forefront of discussion.

LK: My 17-year old niece told me when I saw her on Easter that she is playing Maureen in a production of Rent at her high school.
IM:Oh, yay!

LK: As the woman who originated the role, do you have any advice for her?
IM:To take it very seriously; that Maureen takes everything seriously and that the comedy will come out of just how seriously she takes it. So, not to play the jokes, just to believe that she is the best performance artist and the best person and the sexiest person in the whole world. And the rest of it will blossom around that, but she has to take it seriously. She can't play at the jokes.

LK: That sounds like great advice. I will pass it on to her.
IM:Okay.

LK: Thank you.
IM:See you soon!

Behind the music

Idina Menzel talks about the writing and recording of the song "I Feel Everything," from her new disc I Stand.

"You know my parents were going through a divorce when I was younger and I just always had that - I always felt like when I'd come home from school and walk into the house I never really knew what I was walking in to. And somehow I've taken that hypersensitivity into my adulthood and find myself worrying about how people, what kind of moods people are going to be in and so it's sort of you know that's sort of really what it's about.

"It's interesting that you ask about that song. It's a song that went through different stages. First we went really heavy and it was a really hard rock tune with lots of - like a wall of guitars and it was little higher in key, where it was more angsty, I guess. And it didn't really fit into the sonics of the rest of the album. But I knew that the song was there. And [producer] Glen Ballard and I sat at the piano and we just played it, almost like a ballad to get back to the actual chords and the skeleton of the song itself and it was so beautiful like that at the piano that we started from scratch and brought the key down. You know keys in my voice are so important it's unbelievable how I can sing in lots of different keys but depending on what you pick it evokes a different emotion and so when we brought it down it was less angry and a little bit more, what's the word, I guess fragile. So then we rediscovered it together and now I think it's found a good place.

That is one of the songs I do love to perform as well."