Last night my friend Jenny and I went to see Kristin Chenoweth in concert at the Hippodrome in Baltimore. It turns out the concert was actually a fundraiser for Hippodrome Foundation. I had no idea when I bought the tickets, but I’m happy I got to do something I enjoy while also supporting a good organization.

For anyone who doesn’t know who Kristin Chenoweth is, she is a famous Tony award winning Broadway actress probably best known for her role as Glinda in Wicked though she actually won her Tony for playing Sally in You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown. She has also guested or starred in a number of television shows in the past several years. She was in the last two years of The West Wing, had a supporting role in Pushing Daisies, and most recently starred in the short-lived ABC drama GCB. She also had a recurring guest role on Glee.

The concert was fantastic! It was more of a staged show rather than just a concert. Kristin had 3 backup singers who she sang various duets and danced with in various ways throughout the show. She sang songs that she herself has performed on Broadway or on television as well as a number of other Broadways songs from shows she was not in. She also has a new CD she was promoting with some original music on it, so she sang a handful of songs off of that as well.

The show was also wickedly funny (see what I did there–hee), which I wasn’t necessarily expecting. I know the majority of it was pre-scripted but like any good performer, Kristin had a way of drawing the audience in and making it feel like she was just telling us stories she was thinking up on the fly. There were also some cute kind of sketches, one of which involved some of the puppets from Avenue Q, which beat out Wicked for the Tony the year they were both nominated.

Apparently one of the things she has been doing at every show is to pick a young girl out of the audience to sing the duet For Good from Wicked with her. There was a 16 year old girl in our audience who is obviously a huge Kristin Chenoweth fan and knew that this was going to happen because as soon as Kristin finished singing Popular (also from Wicked) this girl started shouting out “Me, me, me!”. So Kristin of course chose her to sing the duet. The girl was so super, excited. She was not actually a very good singer, so she’ll probably never have the experience of being on stage in front of a huge crown like that again so I’m really happy she got to have that experience. The whole thing was really sweet.

It was a great show. She’s performing in DC tonight, so if you’re in the area I highly suggest you make some last minute plans to go out and see her.