Featured photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman.
Redwood is chock-full of flash: the return of a Broadway legend, a towering set complete with a massive climbable tree, and the novelty of actors singing their faces off while swinging on ropes in midair. But it’s the musical’s undeniable heart that makes it worth the price of admission.
The new musical, directed and co-written by Tina Landau, follows Idina Menzel (back on Broadway for the first time in a decade) as Jesse, a woman in the throes of grief. Nearly a year after her son’s unexpected death, she picks up and drives across the country, leaving her wife alone in New York City as she trades manmade skyscrapers for … well, the skyscrapers of the natural world: a redwood forest in California. A city slicker through and through, Jesse is far out of her element in the woods, but nevertheless, she feels an inexplicable urge to climb and even spend days on end up in a tree.
Entertainment with an edge
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To fully enjoy Redwood, you have to be okay with more than a few clichés. It’s a show that suffers acutely from musical theater-isms, including a finale that begins with the line, “All these things that I have learned…” That’s not even to mention its plethora of tree metaphors, from how roots connect us all to how thick bark can keep you safe even from wildfires. It all comes off a little sappy (tree pun intended), but if you’re willing to give in and embrace the base level of cringe, there’s plenty of humor, heart, and hum-worthy music to enjoy.
Besides, beyond that surface layer of cheese, Redwood’s emotional core — its “heartwood,” as the musical itself would call it — taps into something fundamentally human. Grief, the going through it and the coming out of it (if we do at all), is something every person has to experience time and time again throughout life. Redwood provides a nuanced perspective, offering ways to move forward from a loss while also recognizing that some emotional wounds can never be fully healed.
Fans of Menzel can expect a performance worthy of her sky-high reputation. The Tony-winning actress’s vocals are as strong as ever, and they sound extra impressive as she’s dangling upside-down 20 feet in the air. Her powerhouse anthem “Great Escape” and her heartbreaking ballad “No Repair” showcase Menzel at her best — though admittedly, not all five of her solo songs needed to make the final cut of Redwood, especially given its 110-minute runtime and lack of an intermission. (Small-bladdered theatergoers beware.)
And though Menzel is the show’s big-name star, audiences who come to Redwood for her may find themselves staying for the show’s young supporting cast, Zachary Noah Piser (Dear Evan Hansen, KPOP) as Jesse’s son Spencer (among other parts) and Khaila Wilcoxon (SIX, Hadestown) as Becca, a forestry expert with more proficiency for plants than people. Wilcoxon’s voice is among the best on modern-day Broadway — both of her big numbers, “Little Redwood” and “Becca’s Song,” blew the roof off the theater and left the audience in thunderous applause — but it’s her emotional journey as Becca that makes Wilcoxon a true contender for this year’s Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.
Meanwhile, Piser’s powerful 11 o’clock number “Still” is a highlight in the show’s final stretch — and it’s primed to enter the audition books of musical theater boys across the country, to boot. The song presents the show’s thesis statement: that everyone dies, so let’s all do the most with the time we have left. Though it’s a slow build to get there, once Redwood reaches the emotional height of its conclusion, the view is worth the climb. ♦
Redwood is now playing at Broadway’s Nederlander Theater. Tickets are available here.
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