I usually just stay in on New Year’s Eve (I always say it’s Amateur night) but this year I wanted to do something different, and there was Kristen Chenoweth at Disney Hall in DTLA. I thought it would probable be the same as her November Broadway show called ‘For The Girls,’ culled from her new album of the same. Since I missed the Broadway run, I thought this would be just as good.

I was wrong. It really isn’t the same exact show (based on the New York reviews I read) but it’s close. This show is basically a set, which makes sense now since she does an early and a late show – we were at the late show which ends with a countdown to midnight. There are some great elements here – she opens with Peggy Lee’s ‘W O M A N’ with her two fantastic back up singers, Crystal Monee Hall and Marissa Rosen. Indeed, most of the repertoire comes from the new album, and I kind of loved a lot of it, from her wistful ‘The Way We Were,’ ably accompanied by her longtime Musical Director, Mary Mitchell-Campbell. And while there were good versions of ‘You Don’t Own Me,’ and ‘Yesterday Once More,’ the arrangements of those songs did not veer too much from the original versions. The acapella non-amplified version of ‘I Will Always Love You’ was pretty welcome, at least it wasn’t a retread of Whitney Houston’s bombastic version. All in all, it kept me wanting more, though. I wish she had gone through some of her, um, popular songs like, um, ‘Popular.’  But it was still a great way to ring in the New Year.