Idina Menzel’s journey to Broadway in ‘Redwood’ has roots in Syosset
Shortly before a run-through of her new Broadway musical, “Redwood,” Idina Menzel reflected on her performing roots that stretch back to Long Island.
“Baylis Elementary, third grade,” she said during a Zoom chat from the Nederlander Theatre, where the show opens Thursday. “That was my very first solo in the choir.” The song? “Edelweiss.”
Covering this sweetly melodic tune from “The Sound of Music” was just the beginning for the actress and singer with star-dusted memories of her childhood and school days in Syosset.
In fourth grade, she clicked her heels three times as Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz.” In a high school production of “Carousel, she played Nettie, a supporting character who sings “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”
Not landing the lead role of Julie Jordan in the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic stung, Menzel admitted. She recalled the director telling her that Nettie’s emotionally heavy number “needed the maturity of her voice” and how that reassurance didn’t ease the ache. “I was, like, ‘Whatever.’ ”
Flash-forward to today: At 53, Menzel is a celebrated stage and screen star thanks to a series of blockbuster projects and attention-getting roles, including her character in “Redwood.” After a decade away from Broadway, Menzel shoulders the new show as Jesse, a New York gallery owner and mom in upheaval who leaves her home with no particular destination in mind.
“She’s just running toward the sun,” Menzel said. “She doesn’t know where she’s going to end up.” Jesse lands in Northern California where she finds a steadying source of healing in the majestic forests.
“It’s a very intimate story with only five actors in the cast,” said Menzel, adding that the tone of the musical is “poetic and impressionistic.”
FAIRY TALE ELEMENTS
“Redwood” comes nearly 30 years after Menzel’s breakthrough on Broadway. After singing as a teenager at bar mitzvahs and birthday parties on Long Island and going to college at New York University, she landed the part of Maureen Johnson in 1996 in the Pulitzer Prize-winning rock musical “Rent.”
In 2003 she earned a best actress Tony Award and became a girl-power role model as the gravity-defying green witch Elphaba in “Wicked.” Her cameo appearance alongside Kristin Chenoweth, Broadway’s original Glinda, in the new movie added an extra twinkle to the Emerald City.
Menzel also helped create Elsamania in 2013 by belting “Let It Go” in Disney’s Oscar winner “Frozen.” (She also weathered a weird, unwanted blizzard of publicity when John Travolta referred to her as “Adele Dazeem” at the Academy Awards in 2014. Enough said about that.)
Like “Wicked” and “Frozen,” the story in “Redwood” also has fairy tale-like elements, said director and book writer Tina Landau. “Jesse goes into the woods,” Landau told Newsday. “She doesn’t know what she will find there and ends up encountering people and obstacles and adventures that lead her to change.”
To prepare for the show Menzel trekked to the West Coast and immersed herself in the towering, ancient conifers. “I went several times,” she said. “I worked with a renowned tree climber, activist and botanist. His name’s Tim Kovar, and he took me up to the canopy. I actually practiced my songs from the treetop. He got a little concert.”
WOODSY WALLPAPER
Trees now loom large in her Nederlander dressing room, the same home away from home she had during “Rent.” Then she shared it. Now it’s all hers. Menzel had the room spruced up with redwood forest wallpaper.
Asked what treasures she keeps in her offstage space, Menzel deadpans, “I’m not one to pat myself on the back. I’m not going to have a ‘Frozen’ platinum album in here.”
She does have photos of her husband, Aaron Lohr, and her 15-year-old son, Walker, whom she shares with ex-spouse and former “Rent” co-star Taye Diggs.
Menzel, like fellow production members, literally learned the ropes for “Redwood.” “We’ve all become certified climbers,” she said. The special skill comes in handy for an aerial sequence.
“We have this incredible vertical dance group called BANDALOOP,” she said. “They’re our choreographers, and they’ve taken us climbing as well. I can’t wait for people to see this work that we’re doing in the show. We’re not getting Peter Pan’d around. We’re working hard.”
One of Menzel’s most profound takeaways from this project is tied to what she’s learned about the history and structure of redwoods. “They’re survivors,” Menzel said. “They have been around for a thousand years, and they’ve seen everything.”
She marveled, in particular, at the skyscraping giants’ root systems, which, surprisingly, don’t run very deep. They’re actually shallow, wide-spreading and interconnected with nearby trees. “They kind of clasp each other’s hands,” Menzel said. “They sustain each other and hold each other up.”
The theme of community, mutual support and resilience tolls eloquently in the story of Jesse, a lost woman who finds herself after making a “Great Escape.” That’s the telling title of a song from the show.
Menzel acknowledged she’s thought about taking flight from her life. “Yeah, I think everyone has that impulse,” she said, adding that she’s grappled with “feeling so much of my worth depends on the state of my voice and the roles that I take. I often feel like I just want to press the pause button.”
With “Redwood,” Menzel isn’t idling, she’s actually branching out. The show marks a significant creative change for Menzel, who’s credited for conceiving the show with Landau, as well as for contributing additional material. The songs are by Broadway newcomer Kate Diaz.
To Menzel, the added responsibility is as natural as breathing. “I’ve always been a songwriter and, so, a storyteller. I really hear characters from a musical place. So I really feel I have a lot to contribute to the making of a musical.”
This show has been in her brain for a long time. About 15 years ago she approached Landau with an idea inspired by the true story of Julia Butterfly Hill, an activist who’s known for living in a California redwood tree to prevent its logging.
While Menzel wasn’t necessarily keen on telling a bio, the notion of a woman being a rule breaker and the power of nature struck her. It turned out that Landau, whose previous Broadway credits include the musical “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “Mother Play,” was cultivating her own concept involving a woman and trees.
“We both had that in our minds and imaginations and hearts as a core image,” said Landau. “We worked on what we thought was an idea for a show for a little while, but our lives took us in different directions.”
Reunited at the start of the pandemic, they collaborated on the show that arrived on Broadway following a run a year ago at the La Jolla Playhouse.
“The first thing that drew me to this entire story was Hill’s bravery and her courage and her fortitude,” Menzel continued. “I wondered, ‘Would I be able to do something like that?’”
Menzel paused, then answered her own question. “I’ve been a fearful person and the glass-half-empty person in my life,” she said. “But I think it’s pretty courageous to do this show. It’s courageous to do any original show and tell a new story. You’re really putting yourself out there. So, I feel I can pat myself on the back for that.”