Review: Idina Menzel’s ‘Redwood’ on Broadway Gets Lost in the Forest

There is an argument between a group of characters in the new Broadway musical Redwood (Nederlander Theatre, booking through July 6) that is both pointless—it’s merely a clumsy attempt to whip up conflict to jolt the audience’s attention—and harsh on the ears, with people speaking over each other making for an inaudible squall. This earnest musical, with Wicked star Idina Menzel in the lead, is full of such discordant moments; so much gets muddled in translation from stage to audience.

Any positives? Well, you will certainly come to know more about redwood trees’ roots and nutrient dispersal system than you may have done beforehand. The problem is all the metaphorical clutter and blurry storytelling the musical insists on weighing down its branches with.

The Tony-Award winning Menzel—returning to the Nederlander, where she first made her name in the Broadway transfer of Rent—is Jesse, a gallery owner who is in dramatic retreat from her New York life with wife Mel (De’Adre Aziza). It is approaching the first anniversary of her teenage son, Spencer’s (Zachary Noah Piser), death and she is mired in grief. So, at the beginning of the musical, she drives west “to find somewhere else to be/where I’m no longer me.” Like Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, and E.T., answers and magic lie in a faraway forest.

From the start, the musical (director Tina Landau wrote the book and co-conceived the show with Menzel, and wrote the lyrics with Kate Diaz) toggles back and forth in time, as memories erupt in Jesse’s mind alongside her traumatized present. Her mind is on fire.

We meet a very alive Spencer (who at first stalks the stage rather menacingly), and we see Jesse and Mel go on their first date. However, we don’t get a sense of love or family or even the traces of basic, close relationships in any of these fragmentary tableaux, and so the emotional force of the undermining of Jesse and Mel’s marriage given the former’s flit west, and the relationship of mother and son, feel puzzlingly diluted from the start.

The drama Jesse undergoes in a California redwood forest feels just as forced. There she meets leaf-counting canopy botanists Finn (Michael Park) and Becca (Khaila Wilcoxon). Jesse wants to connect with the trees, and they realize they have a babbling, emotionally unstable person on their hands. Finn is the romantic man of the land, who empathizes immediately with Jesse’s need to find something profound in the forest; Becca is more scientific and sober, and a welcome tribune of the audience’s bafflement at Jesse’s bizarro behavior.

One very funny line has Jesse bridling at the idea of being offered a “pity climb” up the tree. “I want to work for you,” she tells them. “I’m an extremely hard worker and I get s--- done. I have a lot of experience. It’s in art, not trees, but still—it’s valuable.” Is it? We don’t see any evidence of this, or of her professional life apart from a galloping monolog about a particular color.

There is much repetitive back and forth among the three about (in no particular order): redwoods, and everything you ever wanted to know about them; the practicalities of scaling them; the meaning of redwoods; and then the spelling out of the significance of redwoods in combating grief and finding one’s true self, just in case you hadn’t quite got it.

The Redwoods-101-meets-arboreal-woo-woo is relentless. “The heartwood doesn’t carry water or nutrients anymore, but—it’s the strongest part of the tree… Redwoods don’t die because of fire—no, they need it. See, their cones are glued shut by resin and when the fires come, the cones open up and drop their seeds to the ground. And that’s part of how new growth begins—because of the fire—pretty f---ing cool, right?”

Menzel sings as powerfully as her many fans will appreciate, but is hobbled by a character who is—well—a complete pain in the neck, and her same-sounding songs don’t lift her out of this audience-alienating bind. The best number in the show—reflected audibly in our audience’s ovation which followed it—is sung by the excellent Wilcoxon.

Becca’s irritation at Jesse’s narcissistic entitlement is made more acute by Becca’s experience of working in a field that so disregards the presence of Black climbers that it doesn’t make helmets for Black hair (hence Becca’s shaved head). Whatever grief and disillusion Jesse is holding within, and however that is informing her interactions with others, on stage it transmits as deeply irritating and brattish.

This behavior becomes straight-out laughable such as when Jesse elects to name the redwood she finds and adopts as her own, Stella. At this point the screens encompassing the stage have Stella rustling-growling as if to embrace Jesse. If all the jigsaw pieces of the musical were fitting right this should be a deeply moving moment, but the audience around me were silent, sniffle-free, and there were even one or two sniggers.

Something else that should take our breath away is the moment the tree is scaled by Menzel, but this choreographed moment of triumph and release feels limp and lackluster. The screens on stage animate the redwood forests in all their grandeur, but don’t marry convincingly to the staging, so it feels like a manipulative use of technology rather than something thought-through, immersive, and innovative—see their differently excellent deployment in recent Broadway musicals like Maybe Happy Ending and Sunset Boulevard.

Story holes mount up. What was really wrong with Spencer? How did Jesse and Mel’s relationship blossom and decline? What’s the deal with Becca? Why is Finn so down about his life and family? How did Spencer and his life reach the tragic endpoint that is eventually revealed? These plot and character knots spring into view, then just as quickly disappear.

If nothing else, the musical can lay claim to being timely with a concluding segment that features the destructive swathe of a Californian wildfire licking menacingly at the edges of Stella as Jesse nestles in her canopy. Woman and tree certainly seem the happiest couple on stage (“I can feel your warmth, hear your humming breath; as we connect, will you take my hand as we dance?”), but then the musical spins to a moment of suicidal impulse, and the spectral reappearance of Spencer to allay his mother’s guilt; not only does the character play to the audience rather than his mother in these charged moments, he also seems too smiley and leering.

Still, the route is opened up for Jesse to forgive herself and finally prepare to head home to poor Mel, who by this point is attending couples therapy by herself. Mel’s loyalty and patience are commendable, but she deserves more stage time; a scene showing her saying “F--- this,” and heading to Cubbyhole for a large gin and tonic and getting some of her favorite songs on the jukebox would be perfect.

By the end, all the fires—literal and psychological—have been put out. Jesse, of course, ultimately sees herself as a redwood: “If I was a tree, which I kinda sorta am at this point, my heart wouldn’t be strong because it’s dead—it would be strong because it holds what’s dead—it uses what’s dead as a source of strength… My heartwood will make sure I keep on living.” Well, it’s a lovely thought to end with if by now you are not lying, whimpering and exhausted, on Redwood’s forest floor of confected conflict and overstated metaphors.