The 24 Hour Musicals.

It’s all pretty amazing.

I've written musicals in a week, but a day?

Oh, and here’s who’s participating:

THE CAST AND CREATIVES (SO FAR):

(subject to change, and of course, definitely going to grow):

Idina Menzel (Wicked, Rent), Cheyenne Jackson (All Shook Up, Xanadu), Alicia Witt (Vanilla Sky, Law and Order), Rachel Dratch (Saturday Night Live, 30 Rock), Mo Rocca (Spelling Bee, CBS, NPR), Stephen Pasquale (Rescue Me, Reasons to Be Pretty), Tracie Thoms (Rent, Cold Case), Jonathan Marc Sherman (Things We Want, The Knickerbocker), Ted Sperling (Guys and Dolls, South Pacific), Catherine Johnson (Mamma Mia!)

High School RENT Canceled.

Instructor: Newport Beach school play canceled because of gay characters | school, gay, asrani, script, high – News – OCRegister.com.

That’s the story that’s floating around the internets.  It’s too bad, really, because Rent is kind of the ideal high school show right now, as I’ve talked about in the past.  But here’s what I keep getting hung up on in all the articles (bold emphasis mine):

Martin, she said, nixed the play Thursday after deciding there was “not enough time to revise to script,” even though the musical wasn’t set to begin until April 23 and even though the principal had not yet seen the script or requested any changes.

Ignore the typo in there, and here’s a second reference to what’s bothering me:

Martin, in an interview, told a much different version of events. Rehearsals hadn’t begun and scripts hadn’t been ordered, so getting a script for the principal would take almost two weeks, he said, and Asrani decided that would not leave enough time for revision and changes.

Maybe I’m just being a Dramatists Guild stickler here, but I’ll go ahead and quote the Dramatist’s Bill of Rights:

No one (e.g., directors, actors, dramaturgs) can make changes, alterations, and/or omissions to your script – including the text, title, and stage directions – without your consent. This is called “script approval.”

Teachers shouldn’t be revising anyone’s scripts anyway.  The student version of Rent exists so that schools who have questions about the show’s content can do a more sanitized version.  I don’t like people editing it down even further.  It’s hard to argue that it’s going to damage the Rent property too much at this stage, but the precedent is not cool.  And yes, I know this goes on all the time, but it bothers me immensely.

RENT. Six. (Post-RENT|IN THE HEIGHTS)

It’s been one week since I saw Rent’s final performance in the movie theater.  I have seen five shows (all but one were musicals or near-musicals) since then, not to mention another near-musical and another play last week.  And they all, in some way, can be tied back to Rent in my head.  I’ll go one by one here (actually, now that I think about it, I’ll list them here and split them into smaller discussion posts; contentcontentcontent), and I’ll ask you to remember that I’m not reviewing anything here–just tossing out some personal thoughts cultivated in the glow of my reexaminations of the Rent experience.  These are the shows:

In The Heights
Hairspray
Boom Bap Meditations and the break/s (both part of the Hip-Hop Theater Festival that I’ll discuss together)
Rock of Ages
Close Ties and Man For All Seasons (very different plays that I’ll discuss together)

So that’s the list.  And I’ll start, fittingly, with a show I’ve already discussed semi-intensively here: In The Heights.  This is what I wrote about the show right before The Tonys, which was right after I saw it for the first time:

In The Heights made me cry, and made me cry repeatedly (well, not cry, but tears in my eyes intermittently from the moment the music started), not because of the touching stories of love and acceptance and keeping life going in the face of all kinds of hardships (because honestly, the storylines are nothing we haven’t seen before), but because–and forgive the emotion here, but the emotion is really the point–GOD DAMN IT THOSE ARE PUERTO RICAN FLAGS UP THERE, and Dominican flags, and some Mexican and Cuban, and that’s Washington Heights, and it’s really Washington Heights, and that dude is starting the show by rapping, and it’s good rapping, really good rapping, really real rapping, and there’s a b-boy, and a real b-boy, and the Spanish fits, and no pare, sigue sigue is just, it’s just, god damn it, it’s perfect.  And we’re not gang members or drug dealers or even Lothario Latin lovers–we’re people, hard-working people who struggle with gentrification and self-worth issues and questions of leaving home and putting our pasts behind us to succeed or clutching madly to keep them close and push us even higher.

And I was in the audience on Mother’s Day, and this, I can’t stress this enough, this is what I want Latinos to do on Mother’s Day, I want them to go see In The Heights, all dressed up, full families, and I want them cheering when the lights go down, and I want them cheering and “oooooh”-ing when Nina and Benny kiss on the fire escape, and I want little Puerto Rican and Dominican boys to feel like Usnavi is looking right at them when he’s rhyming the way I felt like John Leguizamo’s Miggy was looking right at me all through Spic-o-Rama.  And you know what?  I’ve got tears in my eyes (just barely, son, just barely) even right now–right now–as I’m writing this.

And all that is still there in a big way, although I wasn’t overwhelmed with the emotion of the whole thing this time around, probably because I had seen it and was prepared (and maybe because I was trying to be cool in front of Kitt Kittredge, who I was with this time instead of my mom, in front of whom I have no need to look cool).  The pride is embedded in the piece, and I still think that’s the second biggest legacy this show will leave when all is said and done (the first being its incredible use of hip-hop within a full-on dramatic context–I’ll come back to this idea when talking about the break/s and Boom Bap Meditations later in the week/future).  But the thing I didn’t originally recognize about the show — the thing I actually got completely wrong the first time around — was this:

It’s a really good show.

I think I overvalued the impact that all those Puerto Rican flags had on my enjoyment the first time around.  I credited the show for a solid understanding of Broadway musical storytelling structure, but kind of downplayed the effectiveness of the story’s specifics.  I wasn’t even convinced that the songs (outside of the couple of big showstoppers) were entirely new, exciting, or hummable.  I was wrong on most, if not all counts.  It’s a good show, a strong show getting great performances that smooth over any trouble spots for sure, but it’s well put-together and (and I hate using this word) universal somehow — you don’t have to have firsthand knowledge of Puerto Ricans or Dominicans or hip-hop or The Heights to get it.  If you go with it, you’ll dig it.  You’ll probably love it.

(The problem of universality, we might have discussed before, is a major point of contention for many writers of color.  Our work, if it goes to “mainstream” audiences, is expected to “transcend race/ethnicity” so it can be consumed by the population at large.  In other words, your “average theatergoer” (I’m euphemismising away) needs to see/relate to your Puerto Rican characters as something other than (more than?) just Puerto Ricans — they need to be “real people.”  I think when I state it that way, “euphemisms” and all, it’s easy to see exactly what the problem with that “thinking” “is”.  Okay, those last two weren’t euphemisms at all.  I’ll talk more about this soon–specifically when we spend some time on those plays mentioned above.)

Point is, this show does the “universal” thing without compromise.  It tells a good, easy to follow story, and it tells it well, and it happens to tell it through cultural forms associated with young Latino folk.  That’s no small accomplishment.  it’s what I attempted to do with Welcome to Arroyo’s (and if any of you reading this haven’t read that play, it’s being published next year, so there’s your chance), only my story is a little messier and militant and maybe particular to one culture.  Lin-Manuel and Quiara and team have succeeded in not giving up the flavor while making the meat a little more tender and palatable for all-to-most tastes.  That’s a good thing.

That night, there was a couple sitting directly in front of us (and Britney Spears about ten rows up and over), and they were white, and they were older (maybe my parents’ age), and they were reacting semi-loudly throughout the show, trading thoughts back and forth in that “ooh, I’m enjoying this” kind of way.  It was good to see.

And how does this all tie to Rent?  Two things that I’ve mentioned here before:

1.  Spring Awakening, some say, is the logical heir to Rent’s fans, and I’d say that’s at least partially right.   But some of us, we kind of needed a show about young folks in New York City to come along and fill the void Rent is leaving behind.  We needed a multicultural show.  We needed a show that, for all its perceived toughness in form and music, is an old-fashioned musical at heart.  That’s Heights.

2.  At the Tonys, the original cast of Rent came out onstage and sang, and the audience applauded…but Lin-Manuel gave them the standing ovation they deserved, shortly after giving the coolest acceptance speech ever.  And it’s fitting, because as much as Rent’s artistic success is tied up in its creator’s backstory, so is Heights‘.  Historians are going to look back on this year’s ceremony and say “Paulo Szot?  Really?”

This is now my longest post ever, I think, so I’ll stop and sum up by repeating all I really wanted to say about this topic anyway:

Go see In The Heights.

RENT. Five.

So the whole point of this series of Rent posts is that I spent the afternoon Sunday watching the show’s final Broadway performance on the big screen.  I wasn’t sure if I was going to go see it; I had my moment(s) with the show, and the best ones were in the past.  The high school production was sort of a fitting way to let the show rest in my memory–new energy and excitement, a sense of the impact that the piece has had as was going to continue to have in the life of young theater lovers (and some folks who didn’t even know that theater could be something they’d like).  Sitting through the filmed version of the final show would mean watching a new cast do their impressions of Idina and Adam and Daphne and Jesse and Aiko (who *still* is the only person who has ever pulled off Alexi Darling, in my eyes).  They’d never measure up.  I’d be saddened by the whole thing.  It could color my memories.  I waited until the very last showing of it, conceivably the last showing ever (the film was given a monumentally limited release).  As late as fifteen minutes before showtime, I wasn’t sure I was going to go.

I’m glad I did.

The major problem with ending on the high school production as a final memory became clear to me pretty early on: they hadn’t done the whole show.  Pieces were edited, songs were cut, words were changed.  It was a tribute, and a moving one, but it wasn’t the show.  Same was true of the movie.  But this–this was the whole show, straightforward, intermission and all, just like seeing it onstage.  This was a good thing.

While the casting had been my biggest fear, it proved pretty unfounded.  Sure, Eden Espinosa does an almost uncanny Idina Menzel impression throughout, but I think it’s unfair to even call it an impression.  I think these two performers are just that similar.  She was great with Tracie Thoms, who, like I said a few posts back, is kind of a perfect Joanne.  The other performers more than held their own, taking things in new directions and, while not accomplishing the impossible mission of measuring up to the performances I fell in love with at New York Theater Workshop twelve years ago, capturing the spirit of joy and defiance that makes the show what it is.  And there was even some original flavor in that final cast, with Gwen Stewart back in the ensemble (she’s the soloist on Seasons of Love, and she’s responsible for one of my favorite bits of dialogue in the piece: “This lot is full of motherfucking artists.  Hey artist, got a dollar?  I thought not.”

And the thing is, the show simply holds up, even better than I think  most of us thought it would when we first saw it.  The good stuff is really good, incredibly smart and emotional and fun.  “La Vie Boheme” is always going to work.  “Take Me or Leave Me” should have been a big pop hit.  “I’ll Cover You (reprise)” will always make folks cry.  The show is well-written, well-scored, and beautifully structured (until the last 25%, of course).  It’s a great show.  It really is a great show.

When the performance ended, the cast came out to take their bows, then left the stage…to be replaced by much of the original cast (very disappointing not to see Idina and Taye…or Aiko, for that matter), who then led a huge group of company members in another round of Seasons of Love.  It was all fitting really, and the only possible way to close it all out.

And then, of course, after everyone bowed, the screen faded to a picture of Jonathan Larson.

Everyone applauded.

We all got our chance to say goodbye.

RENT. Three.

I saw the film version of Rent in 2005, nine years after the magical experience at New York Theatre Workshop.  I hated it.  Maybe not hated.  Strongly disliked.  The primary problem, I thought, was that too long had passed before the film got made.  The original cast was starting to look a little long in the tooth, and that fact was driven home by the fresh additions of Tracie Thoms (more on her later) and Rosario Dawson (who should be in, if not all movies, then most).

The secondary problem, I thought, was a question of tone and approach: who was this movie for?  The obvious audience was the army of Rentheads (a category within which I think I have to, reluctantly, include myself), but they/we already know the show backwards and forwards.  The film made a number of structural changes to the piece, including cutting a bunch of songs, changing details, and disrupting the overall flow that the had been mastered in the musical.  This wasn’t the same piece of art that folks knew from the stage and the stereo.  At the same time, the film’s changes didn’t really take the piece in exciting new directions; it was hard to imagine someone who wasn’t already a fan of (or at least familiar with) the musical falling in love with the film.

My final problem with the movie was seemingly insignificant but straight to the heart of the matter: they shot lots of it in California.  Some exteriors were shot in NYC, but the overall feel still wasn’t right.  This was a New York show.  This was a show about a very specific place and time–you couldn’t go back to the time, but you could certainly have revisited the place.  New York City should have made this movie happen in New York City.

All that said, there are moments.

Tracie Thoms is kind of perfect as Joanne, both here and onstage (more on that in a few days).  There’s something young and exciting about her–she’s not Fredi Walker, who had a great voice and presence as well, but she’s a great fit.  The great songs still pop, for the most part (start with the following video and follow the trail on youtube; I’m not sure if this version of “Tango: Maureen” is kind of cool or woefully misguided):

All in all, the sad part of the movie is that it’s not what it could have been.  The original film rumors started in 2001 with the idea that Spike Lee was going to be at the helm (”shooting down the street”), and I remember talk that Justin Timberlake was going to star at one point (as Roger, I assume–not exactly a snug fit).  I’m not sure either of these celebs (or any celebs) would have been able to pull it off.  Even by 2001, the moment to make the movie had kind of passed.

Tomorrow…I fall back in love with the show.

RENT. Two.

The second time I saw Rent was a few months later.  On Broadway.

I don’t remember a lot of specifics from that performance.  I was there as part of an NYU group again, although we had paid for tickets this time (probably through a steep Ticket Central discount).   I don’t remember who I was with–my roommate Jed, maybe?   We sat in the last row of the theater.  The stories were further away, distanced–yes, we were physically distanced from the performers, but also there was a disconnect from what was happening onstage.  The show was swallowed up in that big space.  It no longer felt like something I had ownership over–it was this big pop culture beast now, this phenomenon, and everyone was getting to participate it…and to make matters worse, I was as far away from the action as one could possibly be.

It was probably during this performance that I really started to see the major flaws in the piece, especially in the second act.  The first show had swept me up in the euporhoria of it all–the last 30 minutes or so could coast on what had come before.  This time though, with the distance and the new crowd, there wasn’t a huge wave to coast on.  The show was still damn good, especially in the spots that worked, but the overall effect was less than expected.  I started to doubt the show.  I wondered if maybe I had been unfairly caught up in the emotion at NYTW.  Maybe the show wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

I don’t remember if I purchased the cast album before or after seeing the Broadway production, but the cast album is certainly my freshest memory of the show–I imagine it’s most people’s freshest memory.  It’s a great damn CD.  I lost it in one of my many moves, although it might still be at my parents’ place somewhere.  I’m pretty sure the CD is what kept me connected to the idea of that show, kept the memory of that magical first time alive.  Even with the CD, my memory was kind of shaken.  I’d recommend the show to friends wholeheartedly, but I harped a little more on what was wrong.  I think the magic slipped out of my mind a bit.

And then…the movie.

RENT. One.

It’s 1996, probably February sometime.  I’m in the second semester of my first year at NYU.  I’m part of the Gallatin Scholars, a group that gets to go to cultural events as part of our scholarship package.  We get tickets to this show at New York Theater Workshop.  We sit in the front row.

Let me back up for a second, actually.  My original plan when I came to NYU was to study acting and psychology, but when I get to New York City, I see the life of the student/actor, and I know it’s not for me.  Luckily, I’m in a flexible program; I decide to transition into a more broad-based approach to my studies, with a steady helping of theatrical education as a basic structure.  I’m studying the History of Drama and Theater, mostly dramatic literature, just sort of starting to understand that there’s a whole lot more to the theater world than the stuff they teach you in college.

So I’m excited when we go see this show at NYTW.  I’ve heard about it.  There’s buzz, although at the time I’m not quite aware of exactly how much buzz there is.  A few weeks later, the show would hit the cover of Newsweek.  At the time, this doesn’t seem all that unusual to me.  It also kind of doesn’t seem entirely unusual that this is a show about young people in the neighrborhood I happen to be sitting in–there’s lots of New York theater about New York, right?  So we sit down, and the theater’s kind of small (compared to Broadway, but big compared to lots of the Off-Off houses I was just starting to discover), and the stage is HUGE (feels like the stage is as big as the house), and we’re in the front row, and the lights go down.

And it takes a little while for it all to get going.  The first few songs have fun moments and rock guitar, silly humor (in the form of Mark’s mom on the answering machine), an incredibly sweet meet-cute (between Angel and Collins), some sexiness in the form of Daphne Rubin-Vega (a brief aside: years later, I’d meet Daphne whil working for Joe’s Pub.  I attempted to introduce her to our staff, including our graphics designer, who was a good friend of mine.  I completely — legitimately — forgot my friend’s name while making the introduction.  Daphne has that kind of presence.), and a lot of goodness going for it, but it hasn’t yet blown me away.

And then…it blows me away.

I’ve said this before, and nothing will shake my faith in it: the first quarter of Rent is pretty good, the last quarter is pretty terrible (seriously), but that half in the middle, starting with “Today for You” and ending with “I’ll Cover You (reprise)” is remarkable, incredibly, devastatingly good and relevant and important and powerful.  It hit me there in the theater, and it stays with me to today.  I can’t even express what it is, but that middle chunk gets it right, so right — it’s the kind of thing that musical theater could be and can be and should be, the kind of thing that In The Heights and Passing Strange got right in chunks and pieces, the kind of thing that Crazy for You did as well as anything I’ve ever seen, only with more heart, more real soul, and more of the voice of a group of people who actually exist.  That middle chunk of Rent is a time capsule, and it was a time capsule from the moment it was created — it gets that world right, or as right as you can get it in a musical theater context.

So it’s 1996, and they’re singing La Vie Boheme, and Maureen is mooning Bennie (and they’d go on to get married in the real world), and I’m maybe ten feet from her ass, and she pulls up her pants, and I swear she winks at me.  And then it’s intermission, and I’m shell-shocked, not from the bare ass, but from what I just saw — something that felt real to me, and was full of emotion and subversion on some level, even though it’s a big musical and therefore how subversive can it really be?  But it is, and they’re singing about stuff that I don’t even know what it is but I know that in the fact that they’re mentioning it, it’s important, and I’ll come across it someday (and then last year I finally read Vaclav Havel, and lookie lookie: it leads to a name for my blog) and it’ll impact my life when it does.

And then they line up across the stage at the top of Act Two, and it’s “Seasons of Love,” and I swear they’re a foot away from me, and Taye Diggs spits on me (in the act of singing, of course), and I’m right up close in their eyes, and they’re singing this song about dead friends, and it’s written by their dead friend, and they’re singing it for him — you can see it, they’re singing that song for Jonathan Larson, and I mean — how am I ever going to settle for creating theater that isn’t founded on that close a relationship?

And also, there in the middle of it, there happens to be one of the most beautiful love stories I’ve ever see — and it’s a gay couple’s story.  And you have to realize that I’m 18-years-old, coming from suburbs (not far from Mark’s mom’s house, actually), and I’m only now meeting my first gay friends, and as a straight boy/athlete from the burbs, you’re not exactly conditioned to expect to be moved to the core by a gay relationship — but there it is, in front of me, and Collins sings the “I’ll Cover You (reprise),” and good god, it’s maybe the most beautiful moment I’ve ever seen onstage.

And it ends, and I’m shaken, and everything has changed, yet I’m still not sure that anything has changed beyond me, if you know what I mean.  I’m still not quite understanding the cultural significance of what I just saw.

A few months later, it moved to Broadway.  So I saw it again.

(I’ll tell you about that tomorrow.)

And finally, here’s what SCS means.

So a few folks (hi Mom) have finally, with much prodding from me, broken down and asked what the title of this blog means. The answer is probably not going to be all that exciting.

The Smichovsky Compensation Syndrome comes from a play called Temptation by Vaclav Havel. That name, of course, sounds familiar to you Rentheads (and here’s where I mention Idina Menzel to get my views up), as he’s mentioned in “La Vie Boheme.” For those who don’t know, Havel was a playwright who went on to slightly bigger things…like being the final President of Czechoslovakia. He wrote somewhat absurdist works, although not like Ionesco or Beckett–more about the repetition and lockstep of everyday life–very Sisyphusian stuff.

In Temptation, a sorcerer named Fistula describes the Smichovsky Compensation Syndrome as this:

When a novice first manages to break through the armor of his old defenses and opens himself up to the immense horizons of his hidden potential, after a little while something like a hangover sets in and he sinks into an almost masochistic state of self-accusation and self-punishment.

Of course, he’s talking about selling your soul to the Devil, basically, but I like to think of that little sentence as exactly what it means to be a writer.

PASSING STRANGE Announces Closing.

I just woke up from a little impromptu nap, and I check my e-mail, and I’ve got this message from my buddy and sometimes semi-idol Eisa Davis (links added by me):

so we’re closing with a bang, with the Spike Lee shoot.

thanks for taking this ride with us. if you haven’t caught it, hope you can get here before we close.

as Stew says in the show: is it alright?

and as I say back: yes, it’s alright.

eisa

www.passingstrangeonbroadway.com

This is sad, but not unpredictable news. Passing Strange never found its audience, struggling with a title and some marketing materials that didn’t really represent the show perfectly or highlight its strengths. It was also a tough sell on Broadway, a black rock musical that didn’t have an obvious hook for the suburban moms and tourists who make up your major ticket-purchasing block on the Rialto (look at me, getting my Variety on). The Tony Awards seemed to be the show’s big chance, but timing was a problem there, as In The Heights became sort of destined for Best Musical, and Lin-Manuel’s performance in that show may have split the Best Featured Actor vote with Stew (just a theory), leaving that award to Paulo Szot, not that I think anything other than Best Musical would have made a huge difference anyway. The fact that this show made it from Joe’s Pub to the Public to Broadway, and lasted as long as it did (185 performances including previews) qualifies as a huge success in my mind, even with the certain financial hit the producers have taken.

I was describing the show in an e-mail just now, and I said it was the most interesting “hip” young black show since Noise/Funk, and I was struck by the comparison–both were shows that came out of The Public, yeah, both were somewhat overshadowed and eclipsed by other shows that they were linked with in articles about the new cultural zeitgeist of their given time period (Heights now, Rent, of course, then), and both, from some kind of objective standard at least, were better shows then their counterparts. I say “objective standard” because Rent and Heights are two shows with great personal value to me, although I think both are kind of messy and not as consistently strong as the Public shows. The other thing with that is that both Strange and Noise/Funk are untraditional musicals at heart, turning away from what a regular Broadway show tends to do, and ultimately, that’s the commercial downfall of these pieces. But these aren’t commercial shows–just shows that happened to have some success commercially (and certainly did better critically than commercially, especially Strange).

Screenwriter William Goldman has said that he is amazed that a good movie ever gets made in the Hollywood system, because there is so much that could go wrong at any given moment. I tend to think the same thing about great Broadway shows–the odds are against a production going really well, against a show capturing some kind of great moment or aesthetic or thought and making it all the way to the Great White Way with its integrity and heart still attached. There are just too many places where it could go wrong. Passing Strange got almost everything right; the downfall, sadly, was in the most critical area for keeping the show running: the audience.

But still, I celebrate this show, this cast, this creative team, this man named Stew. If you have a chance, go see this show this week. (If you want to buy your favorite blogger a ticket to the Spike Lee shows or even the closing, I wouldn’t turn them down.) You’ll have to film version of this to remember it by, but you’re going to want to have the actual memory too.

More Rent in High School.

http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A641653

So the short story of that link is that there was supposed to be a big high school production of Rent in Austin this summer, but then it was off, and now it’s back on again.  You get the feeling that this might be the story of this show for a year or so at least as high school attempt to put it on, then run into opposition because of the content.  The weird thing, and I didn’t mention this in my last Rent post, is that folks who complain about the show are likely to do so because of the homosexuality and drug use, but (a) the drug use is far from glorified (even “La Vie Boheme” pretty much skirts that issue) and (b) the homosexual relationships are some of the most beautiful relationships you’ll find in the theater.  Maybe that’s the problem for some folks.

The real tricky part to doing Rent in high school is figuring out how to handle Mimi.  The character is hypersexualized, and any young woman who has seen Daphne Rubin-Vega (or any of the women who have followed in her footsteps onstage) or Rosario Dawson (I love Rosario Dawson) play the role is almost invariably going to try to live up to their gyrations and “sexiness.”  The problem there is Daphne and Rosario (I love Rosario Dawson) are sexy grown women who happen to be playing a 19-year-old dancer–they are inherently sexy women who are able to convey a sexuality that is inherent to the character.  Having a seventeen-year-old girl writhing onstage in a high school production is (a) a disservice to the play, usually, and (b) kind of way more problematic then a little kiss from Angel and Collins or the word “fuck” in “Tango Maureen.”

Oh, and Idina Menzel.