LA Times
By Mikael Wood, Special to the Los Angeles Times

The cast of Fox’s musical TV show performs songs from the first season in front of a rabid crowd.

On the hit series “Glee,” Lea Michele plays Rachel Berry, a plucky high-school sophomore whose Broadway-caliber singing voice affords her little protection from the dismissive eyes of her cool-kid classmates. Not unlike a pimply-faced Dungeons & Dragons master, Rachel’s prestige within McKinley High’s glee club works in inverse proportion to her popularity at school.

Thursday night at the Gibson Amphitheatre, where the cast of the music-heavy “Glee” performed the first of four live concerts there, Michele needed guarding just like her fictional alter ego. But as the actress strolled through the audience belting out “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” it wasn’t bullies and bimbos her security retinue was keeping at arm’s length; rather, it was frenzied “Glee” fans desperate for a close-up glimpse of this rising star.

In case the wall-to-wall media coverage hadn’t already alerted you, television’s ugly ducklings have become real-world swans, and Thursday’s 70-minute performance had the triumphant, sometimes self-satisfied feel of a victory lap.

Much of “Glee’s” success stems from the painfully precise way it captures an outsider’s sensibility; at their most inventive, the show’s musical numbers both embody and contravene its characters’ anxieties and aspirations. At the Gibson, though, in front of a wildly enthusiastic crowd of supporters, the cast seemed less interested in psychological complexity than in old-fashioned showbiz razzmatazz.

And, hey, why not? Mercifully proceeding free of a tortured “Mamma Mia!”-style narrative, “Glee Live! In Concert” presented a series of songs pulled from throughout the show’s first season, which concludes June 8 on Fox. Interstitial video bits featuring Matthew Morrison and Jane Lynch, who play “Glee’s” principal adult characters, provided some plot-line pointers for the uninitiated (if indeed there were any in attendance Thursday). But mostly this was a celebration of the music that provides the show’s pulse.
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