Idina Menzel defies gravity, again and again and again, in Redwood, her new musical at the Nederlander. And it is indeed her musical, her conception (with director and bookwriter Tina Landau), her lyrics (with Kate Diaz, who wrote the music), and her “additional contributions.” Whatever they were the show emerges a touchy-feely vehicle for the original Elphaba of Wicked, who here flies by means other than broom. But literally and figuratively she’s up a tree.
Creating an original musical is no easy task, and Menzel and Landau are to be commended for, ahem, going out on a limb. The performer was inspired by the life of environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill, who spent two years living in a 1,000-year-old, 200′ tall redwood tree in California and successfully stopped it from being logged. The director, meanwhile, was reeling from the death of her 23-year-old nephew from an accidental drug overdose. So emerged Redwood, with an accent on grief, a soupçon of environmentalism, and a whole lot of a suffering, suffocating Menzel.
She plays Jesse, a brash NYC-based gallerist running away from the death the year before of her 23-year-old son, Spencer (Zachary Noah Piser), a trauma we get glimpses of until all is revealed near the end. (Too late for a spoiler alert, I guess, though there is a story there.) From the road we get flashbacks of her life with the boy and her frustrated wife, the cool and collected photojournalist Mel (De’Adre Aziza), who helped raise Spencer. Jesse eventually finds herself in Eureka, CA, amidst the towering redwood trees and, soulfully impressed, decides to put down roots for a few days. This annoys Becca (Khaila Wilcoxon), one of the two canopy arborists stationed there conducting research, but the older Finn (Michael Park) is more accepting of her intrusion, and shows her the ropes of life among the flora. (I’m on Becca’s side; there’s no way the parks service or a professional would allow an amateur like Jesse to camp out and participate in their studies. But I decided to, ahem again, “let it go.”)
For a laboriously intermissionless two hours at the former home of Rent, her breakout smash from thirty years ago, Menzel makes peace with herself and her two new sort-of friends, who have their own issues to resolve. The fine Aziza, a Tony nominee for Passing Strange, is reduced to smartphoning in her part as Jesse and Mel work on their relationship, but distance is best from someone like Jesse, who sucks all the energy out of the room with her kvetching and rationalizations, even when belted in song after unmemorable song (with titles like “Climb,” “The Stars,” “Big Tree Religion,” and “In the Leaves”). You don’t want to spend much time in a treehouse with her but Menzel and Landau want us to find her relatably frazzled, grief-stricken, and sympathetic, which is markedly different from us actually finding her relatably frazzled, grief-stricken, and sympathetic.
Which brings us to “Stella,” the best plant on NY stages since the Little Shop of Horrors revival. So named by Jesse she/it is a wonder, marking the Broadway debut of scenic designer Jason Ardizzone-West. Menzel is undeniably impressive gamboling about and shimmying up and down Stella’s massive rotating trunk, often while singing, and that’s diverting for a number or two. (It took my mind off the little things, like how the closed-off and single-minded Becca, who doesn’t know the difference between Jim Morrison and TV’s Father Knows Best dad Jim Anderson, is familiar with Marcel Marceau.) Stella is draped in wraparound video screens by Hana S. Kim that all but make the theater an IMAX experience, supplemented by Scott Zielinski’s atmospheric lighting and Jonathan Deans’ wonders-of-nature audio.
Dwarfing the three “arbonauts,” though, Stella becomes the center of attention as Menzel’s overly broad playing and the limited roles for the rest of the cast wear thin. Neither a forest fire nor Jesse’s feverish dream encounter with Spencer are enough to reignite interest as Redwood lays on the sap for a teary finish. “I’m a tree hugger now!” she cries. I’m not sure even Greta Thunberg would approve.
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