Gig review: Idina Menzel, Usher Hall, Edinburgh

Published on 17/10/2012 02:38

SHE’S UP best known to British audiences for her West End turn as a misunderstood witch on the road to Oz in Wicked, and that word neatly sums up Idina Menzel’s Scottish debut.

Idina Menzel

Usher Hall, Edinburgh

Star rating: * * * *

Accompanied by a tight 25-piece orchestra, the Tony award-winner radiates Broadway glamour. The set included numbers from her breakthrough hit, Rent, and even bigger smash, Wicked. From the latter, Defying Gravity raised the roof as high as it ever did when she wore the green make-up of Elphaba. And Take Me or Leave Me from Rent gave a few scarily talented audience members a chance to sing with their idol.

The same show supplied No Day But Today, sung as a tribute to its composer, the late Jonathan Larson.

Menzel gave us a poignant reading of At the Ballet from A Chorus Line, which she sang at the funeral of its composer, Marvin Hamlisch, and found room for the same show’s gorgeous What I Did For Love.

Don’t Rain on My Parade saw the New Yorker in lighter mood, tweaking one of the better-known lines to “Hey Edinburgh, here I am”. Of course, the Usher Hall audience lapped it up.

It’s wasn’t all showtunes, as Menzel delivered Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now with intelligence and tenderness, fronted a bombastic version of Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes, and introduced a splendidly melodic new song, Learn to Live Without.

The highlight was a mash-up of Cole Porter’s Love For Sale and The Police’s Roxanne – Menzel calls it “her prostitute medley” – delivered with wit, charm and bags of musicality.

Between-song anecdotes (“I was an exceptional wedding singer”) let the audience get to know her a little better and to know Menzel, it seems, is to love Menzel – she earned every one of her several standing ovations.