Ahead of Oakland tour stop, Idina Menzel talks new Broadway show and Northern California adventures

Idina Menzel is stepping into yet another musical era of her life.

After debuting a new show in February, the Tony Award-winning actress and singer kicks off her first tour in nearly eight years with a Bay Area stop, where she plans to perform a career-spanning set list at Oakland’s Fox Theater on Sunday, July 21.

“There’s going to be a lot of storytelling and songs that parallel certain times in my life,” Menzel, 53, said. “Hopefully, you’ll feel like you are in my living room, just talking, hanging out and playing music together.”

Among the songs Menzel looks forward to performing are selections from “Redwood,” which is headed to Broadway next year. The musical, co-conceived by Menzel and her friend, director and playwright Tina Landau, received critical acclaim after its La Jolla Playhouse world premiere. Menzel plays Jesse, a successful businesswoman, mother and wife who “seems to have it all” yet seeks escape into the Northern California forests.

The musical marks Menzel’s return to Broadway in more than a decade, after rising to fame with her leading roles in “Rent” and “Wicked.”

The Chronicle recently spoke to Menzel by phone about her upcoming tour and the inspiration for “Redwood.”

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Your upcoming musical, “Redwood,” is set in Northern California. What was the inspiration behind the musical and its setting?

A: I’ve fallen in love with the redwoods and everything that they represent — their capacity, their endurance, their ability to survive after thousands and thousands of years, their wisdom and what we can learn from them as human beings. I also learned about a woman named Julia “Butterfly” Hill, who’s a really amazing woman who lived in a tree for over 700 days in order to protest logging companies in Eureka. I fell in love with her story, and it inspired me to do a musical about a woman whose life has changed from her experience at the redwoods.

I was just fascinated with the idea that a woman or anyone could do this. Could I? I am always questioning what I have in me, how far could I take something, and would I be able to withstand that. … Then in researching her, I fell in love with the redwoods. I visited there time and time again. I’ve learned to climb those trees.

Q: What is the main character Jesse like?

A: I built this character around a woman who lives in New York and who’s going through something in her life. She gets in a car and just starts driving away from everything she knows. She doesn’t stop driving until she gets to the redwoods and has this life-changing experience.

Q: Is this what the song “Great Escape” is about?

A: Yeah. As a woman who’s at a real crossroads in her life, she just wants to get away from everything that she possibly can. The show is about wanting to escape but then finding your way back to connection and community.

That particular song is when she finally climbs one of these redwoods, as tall as the Statue of Liberty, and has a moment of peace and serenity — a moment of lucidity and perspective.

Q: As an actor and singer, what has been your “Great Escape”?

A: My great escape is my son — my true, pure moments with my son (14-year-old Walker Nathaniel, with ex-husband Taye Diggs) — just laughing with him, watching him, seeing him learn how to read or watching him play basketball. All of these things keep me present and in the moment, making me feel like I’m actually living a real life.

Q: What can fans anticipate in the production of “Redwood”?

A: It’s a small cast. It’s a fictional, intimate story about a woman on a journey into this beautiful, ancient world of the redwoods. What I am most proud of about the show is our ability to marry this very intimate, simple, universal story of hope and feeling with a set on a huge scale against the backdrop of forests.

Q: What are you looking forward to in the upcoming movie “Wicked” (in theaters Nov. 22), a remake of the Broadway show in which you originated Elphaba?

A: I am extremely proud to have been a part of this legacy, and even more excited to see it reach an even wider audience than before. And I’m just proud of having been a part of creating something that has touched people so deeply.

I feel like it’s in really great hands.