Idina Menzel Plays One-Off Concert at RAH, 6 Oct
Tony and Whatsonstage.com Award-winning star Idina Menzel – who originating the role of Elphaba in Wicked and Maureen in Rent – will bring her one-woman concert to the Royal Albert Hall on 6 October 2011 for one night only, accompanied by the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra.
They’re Playing Our Song and A Chorus Line composer and musical director Marvin Hamlisch will conduct the 60-piece orchestra, with Menzel performing her “diverse repertoire” of musical theatre and classic pop favourites for the first time outside the United States.
Menzel won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for creating the role of Elphaba in Stephen Schwartz‘ Wicked on Broadway. She reprised the role when the musical transferred to the West End’s Apollo Victoria Theatre, winning the Whatsonstage.com Award for her performance in 2007.
The star received a Tony nomination for her 1996 Broadway debut, originating the role of Maureen in the Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning musical Rent. Her other theatre credits include See What I Wanna See at the Public Theater, the 2001 Encores! production Hair, Broadway’s Aida and the 2002 Off-Broadway production of The Vagina Monologues. Menzel also recently appeared in Glee, playing the coach of rival Glee club Vocal Adrenaline.
Menzel returns to the Royal Albert Hall having played Florence Vassy in the 2008 concert staging of Chess.
Marvin Hamlisch is one of only two people to have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony, as well as the Pulitzer prize and is one of Broadway’s most celebrated composers and musical directors. In addition to writing the scores for They’re Playing Our Song and A Chorus Line, he has composed over forty motion picture scores and was musical director and arranger for Barbra Streisand’s 1994 concert tour of the US and the UK. He is currently principal pops composer for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Pasadena Symphony and Pops, Seattle Symphony and San Diego Symphony.
Idina Menzel‘s Royal Albert Hall concert performance is produced by Neil Eckersley and Paul Spicer for Speckulation Entertainment with tickets going on sale at 3pm on Friday 17 June 2011.
