Todrick Hall as Religious Experience
The late David Foster Wallace likened watching Roger Federer play tennis to a religious experience in his famous NYT profile of the Wimbledon star. In a similar vein, watching Todrick Hall perform live onstage last night in his musical theater concert Straight Outta Oz at the Gramercy Theatre in New York was like a religious experience for me. I’ve seen a lot of good theater over my past 18 months living in NYC, from seeing Lin-Manuel Miranda/Daveed Diggs/Leslie Odom, Jr. in Hamilton three times, to seeing almost every show that’s played on Broadway the past year. And Todrick’s performance was just as good, if not better than the many show-stopping performances I’ve been privileged to see this season. As far as a spectacle--for creating a world and letting the audience enter into it--Straight Outta Oz delivers better than most current Broadway shows, and then some. The show started with men in military uniforms exiting the gates of Oz and marching onto stage. Todrick came out w...