A LITTLE BIT WICKED

Innocuous memoir from tiny dynamo Chenoweth.

Achieving Broadway stardom with the musical Wicked in 2003, then appearing on television in The West Wing, Sesame Street and Pushing Daisies, the author has built an impressive showbiz résumé in a relatively short time. Classically trained, Chenoweth has sung at the Met, Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center. She appears in the films Running with Scissors, Stranger than Fiction and The Pink Panther. But it remains unclear why she’s releasing a memoir at this comparatively early stage in her career. Her publisher, she notes, said they found her “a person of interest.” Definitely of interest are the many topics and themes Chenoweth raises, but neither she nor co-author Rodgers (The Secret Sisters, 2006, etc.) does much with them. Born 40 years ago in Broken Arrow, Okla., the actress acquired deep, possibly conservative Christian convictions, which she continues to hold. But she only touches upon the roots of her beliefs and glides over their potential conflict with, for example, her support for gay rights. Also scanted are her rigorous studies at Oklahoma City University with Florence Birdwell, an imposing, somewhat eccentric, brutally honest voice teacher who deserves more colorful treatment than she receives here. Most frustrating of all to theater buffs, Chenoweth offers only a sketchy account of Wicked’s famously bumpy road to Broadway. Warm recollections of family members and showbiz friends, advice for the love-lorn and aspiring actors and recipes for pie and cookies round out the picture. The prose is no more than serviceable, and sometimes too cute by half: Jesus is “an issues guy,” and an airport security agent’s children are “two little-peanut-butter-and-jelly-princesses.” But Chenoweth can also be shrewd, candid and funny. For a skinny girl, she notes, she has “a pretty good pair of Mermans.”

Cheerful, but rather shallow and pointless.