LI's Idina Menzel, more offer virtual 'Saturday Night Seder'

A host of celebrities including Syosset-raised Tony Award winner Idina Menzel will share a virtual Passover Seder with the public on Saturday to help raise funds for COVID-19 first responders.

The "Frozen" star is among 40 performers and rabbis set to gather via remote video from their homes for "Saturday Night Seder" at 8 p.m. on that fourth night of Passover. Telling the story of Passover through music and comedy, it streams free at SaturdayNightSeder.com and on BuzzFeed's YouTube channel Tasty. Viewers are asked to donate to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Foundation's Coronavirus Emergency Response Fund.

Included will be actors Jason Alexander, Mayim Bialik, Rachel Brosnahan, D'Arcy Carden, Darren Criss, Fran Drescher, Billy Eichner, Beanie Feldstein, Ilana Glazer, Richard Kind, Nick Kroll, Judith Light, Camryn Manheim, Debra Messing, Busy Philipps and Henry Winkler.

Additionally appearing will be theater luminaries such as Harvey Fierstein, Alan Menken, Ben Platt, Billy Porter and Stephen Schwartz, as well as producer and talk-show host Andy Cohen, fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi and others, plus rabbis Sharon Brous and Amichai Lau-Lavie.

"In a time of confinement and uncertainty, a rag-tag team of Jews and non-Jewish Passover enthusiasts felt it was more important than ever to channel creative energies and gather community," head writer Alex Edelman said in a statement, adding that the group was "thrilled to be reinterpreting the timeless story of liberation and renewal while raising money for those on the front lines enduring — and fighting — an actual plague."

"Saturday Night Seder" is produced primarily by the immersive dinner theater company Story Course, which had created in-person versions in New York City for about 100 guests each in 2017 and 2018, featuring theater stars.