Idina Menzel

I was at the Albert Hall show.

Poor Idina Menzel was recovering from laryngitis, and worked around this brilliantly by approaching risky notes cautiously, and then raising the volume confidently.

This was a terrific show for Menzel's willingness to really be present, to openly and honestly share her life. She told us of her "ups and downs," of her huge "sensitivity" that makes her hard to handle and "high maintenance." She told us of her heartbreak at the end of her previous relationship and her sorrow for "ruining [her] son's life." She told us how she had thought to exclude her song about her burning love for her child, "Perfect Story," for it's untimely "unfortunate metaphors" regarding "London Bridge" and "flames," but how she would perform it anyway, to share that love she felt with us.

She told us how her "ego" could not stomach an empty seat on the front row, and she invited fans to jump over the barrier that separates the stalls from the arena. One woman hesitated, but a young man named Jason climbed over it and took the seat. Jason was invited on stage for selfies with Menzel, while she cheekily ripped into him as to why a guy as "handsome" as him was coming to a gig alone. When a woman asked for her daughter to get a selfie, Menzel immediately agreed and took the selfie, but then let rip that the girl was not "eight" and needed to get some "independence" and ask for her own selfie: Menzel's brazen honesty in saying so making me crack up laughing.

Menzel also took shots at herself, as she laboriously dragged a chair to sit on for a quiet number, pointing out that Katy Perry or Beyonce would fly down from above as their chairs appeared magically from clouds of smoke.

Muscially, Menzel included the best song from her album, "Small World," she performed Cole Porter lying sultrily across a piano top, she covered Aretha Franklin in a storming "Rock Steady," she did a little "Defying Gravity" with the help of two massive wind machines, which lifted her hair into a Bride of Frankenstein, and she called children to the stage for the one song they wanted to hear "Let it Go," in a setlist that otherwise made adult theatregoers most happy, with renditions from "Rent," like "No Day but Today," in which she talked of her love for Jonathan Larson, and all he taught her. Indeed, she spoke about how difficult it is for her to cater to all her different fan bases, and of how useful the word "sh*te" is to avoid saying the less acceptable in front of kids.

When the kids (few and far between, at first) finally made it to the stage from all corners of the auditorium, she gave them all a chance to sing "Let it go," and when one boy missed a note and recoiled, she coaxed him lovingly back to try again. If this is how encouraging she is with her own child, she most certainly will not ruin his life, as she feared. As she explained to the kids, she is no Disney Princess, but a "Disney Queen."

Musically, this concert was wonderful despite Menzel's laryngitis. But what was most exceptional was how real and present Menzel was in every moment. I have seen many performers (I'm talking about you, Bob Dylan) give nothing of themselves in their concerts, so when a gig like this comes along, where a vast space feels like a cosy evening in a performer's living room, enchantment is unavoidable, especially in the presence of a Disney Queen lol.