The star of this elaborate production is its triumvirate visual design team: Scenic Design -Jason Ardizzone-West; extraordinary Video Design – Hana S. Kim; Lighting Design – Scott Zelinsky. Without these, Redwood would be a simple concept dependent on wandering, almost tuneless music, pedestrian lyrics, and Idina Menzel’s fan base. The artist performs 14 out of 17 songs, most of which sound extremely similar.
Jesse (Idina Menzel) lost her only child, Spencer (Zachary Noah Piser -the last song is his moment), a year ago. While wife Mel (Dr’Adre Aziza, sympathetic, underutilized) works at moving on, Jesse remains tortured, withdrawn, enmeshed in grief. Days before the anniversary of her son’s death, telling no one where she’s going, she feverishly drives cross country without a plan. She finds herself, a city girl in a redwood forest.
Idina Menzel (Jesse)
There’s something about being solitary in expansive nature. “The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and vegetable….They nod to me and I to them…Its effect is like that of a higher thought or better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right.” Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Encountering two canopy arborists, Becca (Khaila Wilcoxon) and her boss, Finn (Michael Park), Jesse is captivated by climbing the enormous, ancient tree before them. She’s in shape, even studied ballet. Will they let her climb? Becka is adamant it’s against the rules. “Listen to the silence, to the trees, “she presses the yammering intruder. “You mean you think the trees can feel?” Jesse pesters.
Beautifully manifest climbing utilizes riggers and carabiners. All three characters walk up (high from the stage) more or less at right angles. Finn and Jesse push off for fun, the latter at one point literally somersaulting with delight. (Marvelous vertical choreography by Melecio Estrella.)
Khaila Wilcoxon (Becka); Michael Park (Finn)
A former hippie, Finn (Michael Park) reacts to Jesse’s determination and relates to her need to heel. He tells her about Redwoods: Roots, for example, are not, as assumed, deep. Instead, they move outward hundreds of feet entwining/ communing with those of other trees. “I believe in the religion of the trees,” he tells her. (Both arborists have suffered loss.) Becka has earned impressive academic degrees and is evangelistic, but tightly wound. Flashbacks show what precipitated Jesse’s running away. Mel’s calls go predominantly unanswered.
Khaila Wilcoxon (Becka) creates a cool, hard chick who wears spirituality just under her skin. The actress’s singing voice is rather like that of Menzel. Michael Park (Finn) is as natural as they come; warm, graceful in the air, never pedantic when explaining. He has a grand baritone.
Idina Menzel (Jesse)
In a nod to things evolving less neatly, Jesse has a small accident and spends a few days at a motel. She returns completely (if cheaply) kitted out. Finn is talked into letting her stay on a suspended platform ten days during work to which she’ll contribute. She’s given supplies. The first evening, subject to nightmares, she bonds with the tree, whose name, leaves tell her, is Stella. Time is spent in Jesse’s agonized mind both then and now. Visited by her son’s ghost, the heroine has a revelation. She finally cries.
There’s an immense forest fire….
Idina Menzel has lost nothing of the power of her voice in years between If and Redwood. We believe her despair, wretched visions, and eventual redemption. There’s just not much “there” there but for what we observe.
Khaila Wilcoxon (Becka), Michael Park (Finn), Idina Menzel (Jesse), Zachary Noah Piser (Spencer), Dr’Adre Aziza (Mel)
Soundscape (Jonathan Deans) beautifully interprets nature, but 70 percent of lyrics are lost to vocal technique that blasts and recedes swallowing words. Toni-Leslie James’ costumes are reliably just right.
Photos by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
Re affinity with trees, read The Overstory by Richard Powers.
Redwood
Book – Tina Landau
Lyrics- Kate Diaz & Tina Landau
Music – Kate Diaz
Conceived by Tina Landau and Idina Menzel
Directed by Tina Landau
Nederlander Theatre
208 West 41st Street
