Aglamour role it’s not. When Idina Menzel appears in “Wicked” – the clever musical take on “The Wizard of Oz,” opening next week on Broadway – she’s painful to behold.
As the so-called Wicked Witch of the West (the role made infamous by the movie’s Margaret Hamilton), Menzel appears in stout boots, black braid and a beret, her face, neck and hands slathered in green makeup – looking for all the world like Che Guevara’s homely, nauseated sister.
Worse, she’s sharing a stage with Kristin Chenoweth, whose blond, cutie-pie Glinda chirps “The artichoke is steamed!” when Menzel’s character, the unfortunately named Elphaba, gets angry.
“I love the role I have,” Menzel says. “I get to be ugly and beautiful, sexy and clumsy, strong and vulnerable – it’s a gift!”
As it turns out, she’s got a few gifts of her own: When out of makeup, she’s a doe-eyed beauty with fan sites devoted to her songwriting and acting. Plus she gets to go home each night to Taye Diggs, the model/actor she married this year.
“He loves the show,” she tells The Post.
“When I’d come home after a bad day in rehearsal and say, ‘I don’t know if I can do this,’ he’d say, ‘Honey, that role is meant for you.’
” ‘What the hell does that mean?’ “
Elphaba, as played by Menzel, has a self-deprecating sense of humor, a love duet with a handsome prince and a vulnerability that makes you ache for her.
“I think Idina’s a complete original,” says “Wicked” director Joe Mantello. “There’s something at the core of what she does that’s very raw, very instinctual.”
In person, she seems soft-spoken and, shockingly for an actress, even shy.
Maybe it has to do with growing up in Syosset, Long Island, a wealthy town where the young Idina (pronounced a-dena) felt awkward.
“My lips were too big for my face and I was flat-chested,” she says. “Boys would make fun of me for a lot of things.”
But she had a voice and she used it, singing at bar mitzvahs and weddings at 16 (“I lied about my age”).
Her big break came with “Rent.” As Maureen – the raunchy lesbian performance artist – she mooned the audience, got a Tony nomination and won the heart of Diggs, a co-stars.
They appeared in “Wild Party” together, too, before marrying in January. On one finger (beneath one green-painted fingernail) is an old-fashioned, diamond-and-sapphire engagement ring.
He’s filming in South Africa now, she says, but his heart’s still on Broadway.
“He’s sort of living vicariously through me,” she says.
