To the long list of adjectives we toss around like verbal confetti to describe Kristin Chenoweth – radiant, impish, perky, sunny, funny! – we can now add fearless. In her concert at the Nederlander Theatre, “For the Girls,” which draws on her new album of the same name, the gifted Broadway star dares to sing songs indelibly associated with some of the greatest female popular singers in American history.
For instance? Oh, Judy Garland. And Barbra Streisand. Doris Day. Karen Carpenter. Linda Ronstadt. Let’s not forget another petite blonde with whom Chenoweth shares both a down-home earthiness and a formidable wit: Dolly Parton.
More timid performers might fight shy of songs that could inspire invidious comparison with these immortals. And Chenoweth does not search out obscurities, either: “The Way We Were” and “Over the Rainbow” are hardly rarities in the canons of Streisand and Garland.
