Idina Menzel returns to Broadway in 'Redwood'

 

Redwood, the new musical at the Nederlander Theatre that marks the return of Idina Menzel to Broadway after nearly a decade, has her legions of fans buzzing with excitement that she is back but for me, not a fan, the real star of the show is the spectacular staging that creates a magical forest filled with the mighty trees and a starry night sky. 

Leaving a bitterly cold winter night I was transported thanks to Jason Ardizzone-West’s giant tree that dominates the stage and Hana S. Kim’s video designs that lift us above the forest floor high into the sky.  The story is clichéd — a depressed middle-aged woman unable to recover after the death of her only child the year before, possibly by suicide at 23, and whose grief is straining her marriage, gets in her car and drives from New York City to California where she finds sanctuary and healing in the forest.  But even a strong story would likely take second notice to this technically ambitious staging of more than 1,000 LED panels that create gorgeous panoramic vistas. 

Redwood has been a passion project for Menzel for about 15 years.  Her inspiration was the story of Julia Butterfly Hill, an environmental activist who spent 738 days living in a 1,000-year-old redwood in the 1990s to fight a timber company’s intention of chopping it down for logging.  Menzel became obsessed with the story and called director Tina Landau to suggest they collaborate and then contributed to the script and songs.    

Menzel, a Tony Award-winner for her origination of Elphaba in Wicked, chose to make the story (book by Landau) one of a personal journey rather than about the environment.  Jesse is a New York gallery owner who married Mel (De’Adre Aziza), a photojournalist, when her son, Spencer (Zachery Noah Piser), was 3 and Mel loved him as her own.  Piser as Spencer appears in the forest in Jesse’s mind and also plays several other characters. 

Shortly after her arrival, while standing and walking in awe of the redwoods, she meets two canopy arborists, Finn (Michael Park) and Becca (Khaila Wilcoxon, right in photo) who teach her to climb, after she pesters them unrelentingly, and finally allow her to spend the night on a platform high up in the tree.  It is there, thanks to the videos surrounding her, we experience the majesty and immensity of the forest and, through Scott Zielinski’s consistently perfect lighting, the immense black sky lit by hundreds of tiny white stars.

Menzel’s commitment to Redwood goes beyond her writing, acting and singing.  She’s also required to dance on the side of the tree, suspended hundreds of feet in the air swirling in a harness and singing while upside down.  Jesse looks euphoric.  I hope Menzel is too.  It looks fun.

A final contribution Medzel made was finding a songwriter for the contemporary pop sound she envisioned.  Landau wanted someone outside the musical theatre world so they searched the Internet and found then 23-year-old Kate Diaz.  They made a wise choice.  Her 17 songs, for which Laudau shares credit for the lyrics, are beautifully targeted for the moment — “Drive,” “Climb,” “The Stars” —and simply affecting, unlike the usual big Broadway show stoppers.  This show is big enough in its size.  It would suffer if the songs were big as well.

'Liberation' is weak to one who lived it

 

A 30-something woman travels back in time to 1970 to get to know her mother better in the world premiere of Bess Wohl’s uneven new play, Liberation, which opened last night at the Laura Pels Theatre.  The exploration, under the direction of Whitney White, lacks the charm and fun of a similar, accidental, journey in the movie “Back to the Future.”  And there’s no cool DeLorean.

 I was in high school and college in the 1970s and my development was deeply affected by the women’s movement.  It still informs my life as I approach 70 next month.  Wolf wasn’t born until 1975, which is why I didn’t feel the spirit of that time.  She hadn’t lived the energy and optimism that was so exciting.

 The five women Lizzie (Susannah Flood, left in photo) attracts to her CR group (consciousness raising) seem to have little commitment to any ideology but they do talk — a lot.  The two hours and 30 minutes running time should be cut considerably.  Wohl seems to be going for humor but I didn’t find their comments funny, just boring.

 Part of the problem could be David Zinn’s set, a basketball court in a subterranean gym in Ohio.  With banners proclaiming the victories of boys’ sports teams plastered on the back wall, the testosterone vibe overwhelms the women, at least in the first act.

 Act Two opens three years later and was the only time I felt the women had the potential to be engaged in the Movement.  Buck naked under Cha See’s softened lighting and following a trend they’ve heard other groups are doing, they reveal themselves while sitting on metal folding chairs and walking around the stage.  Out of respect for the actors our phones were locked in Yondr pouches, which we took to our seats.

One by one the women share one thing they hate and one they love about their bodies. Being liberated from their clothes (costumes by Queen Jean), they liberate their spirits for the first time.

Margie (Betsy Aidem, second from right), my favorite character because she seems the most real, begins.  A traditional wife and mother in her late 50s or early 60s, she skips over what she loves and gets right to what she hates, her scar from the C-sections she had for her two sons.

“I know it shouldn’t bother me but it’s ugly.  It just is.  And I hate it the way my, my skin sort of pooches out over it and then makes this kind of disgusting fat shelf.  I hate it so much and it’s bumpy and long and I hate that, that it feels unfair somehow?  Like, my children, my sons, they got life and my husband got the family he wanted and I ended up this husk with this hideous scar.  I mean I love my sons, don’t get me wrong.  It’s a worth it, blah, blah, blah, but you know.”

She tries to pass on saying what she loves but Dora (Audrey Corsa, far right), in her mid-20s, won’t take no for an answer.

“It’s part of the work, self-love.  It’s, it’s an act of liberation.”

Saying she doesn’t feel liberated and that the others are too young to understand, Margie gives her thoughtful answer.

“I like that my body still works.  I like that my knees bend.  I like that my heart beats.”  She pauses to put her hand over her heart.  “Yeah, it’s still going.  When you get older, if you love long enough, you start to watch as your body slowly descends.  No, really.  It’s like, it’s like watching something on the shore slowly get pulled out to sea.  And I like, I love that I’m not lost in the ocean.  Well, not yet anyway.  That’s it.”

Isidora (Irene Sofia Lucio, second from left), in her early 40s, jumps in readily to say she loves her “tits,” in a tank top or sexy blouse, “and you know you can get anything you want.” 

An obnoxious talker, she was my least favorite.

“Okay, so yeah, fuck off.  I’m a radical, sure, but this tits thing, it works.”

What she hates is her crooked toe, a result of her father stomping on it – intentionally -- when she was a child.

Next up is Celeste (Kristolyn Lloyd), the lone Black woman in the group, in her late 30s, who says they shouldn’t be focusing on appearances at all.

“I think this is the exact trap they want us in, objectifying ourselves, talking about our bodies when we should be having a more, a more elevated, intellectual kind of discourse.”

Having made her point, she readily acknowledges that her entire body “is something the world has been at war with for a very long time.  I can’t really isolate out one body part more than another.  It’s the fact of being in a body that is often unwelcome.”

What she loves is her brain. “And you can tell me that doesn’t count, but I’m counting it because it’s a body part.  I do love my brain.”

Susan (Adina Version, third from left), in her early 20s, is brief.  “Ass good, tits feh,” and she declines to elaborate.

Lizzie likes her eyes and hates lots of her body parts but none as much as her nostrils, which her first boyfriend in high school told her were flared and made her look like an angry horse.  Even since when she’s met someone new she’s looked down so they won’t see her big nostrils.

Dora is astonished.

“So you’ve spent you whole life with your head bowed because of something some little prick said about your nostrils?”

But when it’s her turn, Dora confesses that being pretty means she’s treated like a doll and she thinks that’s why she’s never had an orgasm “because I can’t actually feel anything.”

This was the CR session the women were most engaged with each other and with themselves and when I became most interested in them. Liberation takes time.  In real life and in plays.

Produced by the Roundabout Theatre Company, Liberation plays through March 30.