At the center of a Broadway stage stand a redwood and a woman who wants to be alone in its branches to release her grief.
This is the simple storyline of “Redwood,” a new musical written and directed by Tina Landau and starring Idina Menzel, famous for her roles in “Rent,” “Wicked,” and “Frozen.”
It’s tempting to compare who has the more towering stage presence: Ms. Menzel with her athletic voice, which can reach high notes as she swings upside down from a rope; or the silent lifelike tree, whom she names Stella. Her soaring heights and high-tech features highlight the creativity behind modern set design – and the role it plays in conveying a narrative onstage.
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When Idina Menzel is in a musical, she is one of the most talked-about stars onstage. In her latest, “Redwood,” Stella, a massive tree, is vying for top billing.
“It’s not your typical Broadway musical, and that’s what I love about it,” says scenic designer Jason Ardizzone-West in an interview. “‘Redwood’ … is talking to us in a very unmusical theater way, in a thoughtful and complicated emotional way.”
The opening 30 minutes of the show set a dizzying pace. Jesse, played by Ms. Menzel, spurred by her son’s death, drives west from New York until she finds herself in a California forest. Something has called her there.
Telling the story of a woman in solitary anguish requires a complex network of ideas, artists – and even the audience to bring it to life.
“It’s spectacular,” says Gayle Trocola, a theatergoer who sat close to the stage during a recent performance. “I wanted to go touch the trees.”
Stage and audience “are one space”
“Redwood” is a passion project for both Ms. Landau and Ms. Menzel, one drawn out of their own lives and interests. Ms. Menzel had long wanted to convey the true story of Julia Butterfly Hill, who lived for 738 days in a 200-foot-tall California sequoia to save the 1,000-something-year-old tree from being cut down. After her nephew died, Ms. Landau found comfort during the pandemic gazing at the dancing boughs in her Connecticut backyard. She journeyed with her wife to visit the California giants as part of her healing process.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
The show is also a highly collaborative effort between Mr. Ardizonne-West and video designer Hana S. Kim. A series of LED panels radiating outward offers something new to Broadway – a set designed around fragments of light. Stella is the colorfully rich, hand-carved stoic tree in the center. But she also pivots. Her back is a curved LED screen that becomes part of the constantly shifting surround.
“I am sure redwoods are awesome in real life; I have never seen one. But the tree that Landau and her designers have put onstage is among the most beautiful and wondrous theatrical creations I can recall,” Jesse Green wrote in a review in The New York Times.
During the show, on an otherwise sparse set, panels fill with city scene-scapes: an open road, a starry night, shafts of sunshine through the forest, flickering wildfire, the jagged edges of Jesse’s restless psyche, and even her Google searches for “Butterfly Hill.” The design evokes the recent trend of immersive art exhibits that enable viewers to walk into paintings displayed across floors and walls.
But Mr. Aridzonne-West rejects the word “immersive.” “The whole concept is that the stage and the audiences are one space. The humans in the audience are part of the design of the room,” says Mr. Ardizonne-West, at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, in the department of design for stage and film, where he is guest-teaching for the day. “The word that I prefer is ‘embracing.’”
The theater’s moss-colored seats are a happy coincidence, he says. Sitting a few rows from the stage – with Stella, and much of the action rising overhead – gives audience members the feeling they are observant ground squirrels. The view from the mezzanine perches people among the branches like birds. The video portrayals of the forest and movement are so realistic they leave the woodland creatures, er, audience, feeling woozy during a rapid ascent.
The contrast between Stella’s presence and the constant change of the video images works together to frame Jesse’s inward and outward odyssey from feeling haunted to being at peace.
Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
“Some of my favorite moments are when we’re in this very naturalistic evocation of a forest, and then all of a sudden we’ll crash into Jesse’s brain for a second. … It’s like a portal to the inside of her emotional space,” says Mr. Ardizonne-West. “We can move with the speed of light in the way that memory can very suddenly switch to something very scary or something tragic, or beautiful.”
The imagery of roots
The biggest redwoods can weigh 2.7 million tons and reach higher than the Statue of Liberty. But their roots don’t run deep; they reach outward and link with other trees. That is Ms. Landau’s favorite metaphor.
“Roots are the most important imagery for me in the show, how they reach across space and connect. We all need to find commonality and hold each other up,” Ms. Landau said to a small audience after a recent show. Ultimately, this is what Jesse does, as she pulls strength from her memories – forming her own heartwood, or core, like a redwood – and reconnects with her wife.
Ms. Menzel wondered aloud if she could be courageous enough to climb and stay in a redwood tree. But also, she found herself looking at trees as a guide.
“I fell in love with redwoods as a soaring example of how I want to live my life,” she said during the after-show talk with representatives from partner organizations.
The final song, “Still,” follows a night Jesse spends on a platform suspended from Stella as a wildfire encroaches. It offers the final release of the 90-minute journey into the treetops. Mr. Ardizonne-West reflects on what audiences are left with.
“It’s about a woman in a tree, but one of the lessons is she’s not alone. And in order to heal, she has to understand her connections not just to nature, but to the other people in her life, and to her memory of her son. It’s a very simple story, but it is such a universal and human story.”
“Redwood,” which opened on Broadway Feb. 13, will be performed at the Nederlander Theatre through July 2025.
