It’s been 15 years since Broadway and film icon Idina Menzel came up with the idea to develop a musical about a woman living alone in a California redwood tree.
She planted that seed many years ago with playwright, director and devout tree-lover Tina Landau. And now, with many years of patience and nurturing, their “Redwood” has finally grown to maturity.
“Redwood” is a world-premiere musical opening Feb. 25 at La Jolla Playhouse. Menzel stars in the show, and she co-conceived the story with Landau, who wrote the musical’s book and co-wrote the lyrics with composer Kate Diaz.
Menzel plays Jesse, a successful businesswoman, mother and wife who is hiding a broken heart. In a quest to find inner peace, she drives across the country to Northern California, where she climbs a redwood tree and lives alone in nature for a time in order to heal herself.
Idina Menzel in rehearsal at La Jolla Playhouse for the world premiere musical “Redwood.”
(Courtesy of Shayan Asgharnia)
Menzel has visited the redwoods several times over the years, including a recent trip with her sister, author Cara Mentzel, and a research trip with Landau and Diaz. In an interview earlier this month, Menzel said she finds walking among these ancient giants an other-worldly experience.
“There’s something really magical and majestic about the redwoods. You feel like you’re surrounded by these goddesses,” she said. “They humble you, they inspire you and when you’re there, you feel at peace. There’s a beautiful silence when you’re there.
“Their ability to have survived for thousands of years through fire and through man trying to tear them down, it’s astounding. And it’s a metaphor for all of us in how we can be resilient and how we can survive.”
Landau, who spoke during a recent rehearsal break for “Redwood,” said redwoods have changed her life, and the way these trees — which can live up to 2,000 years and grow up to 360 feet in height — support each other is very human in its own way.
“The roots of a redwood only go down six feet or so, but structurally that seems an impossibility. The key to how they’re able to stand is that they’re connected to the roots of all the trees around them. They’ve taught me about connection and ways to live and be in the world. The more I’ve learned about them, the more I aspire to be a redwood,” Landau said.
The creative team for La Jolla Playhouse’s “Redwood,” composer Kate Diaz, left, star and co-conceiver Idina Menzel and co-conceiver, playwright and director Tina Landau.
(Courtesy of Samantha Laurent)
A lone seeker
Menzel’s original redwood story concept was a bio-musical about Julia Butterfly Hill, an environmentalist who lived 738 days in a California redwood in the late 1990s to protest the logging of the old-growth trees. Hill’s spiritual quest to the redwoods was inspired, in part, by a desire to heal and reevaluate her priorities after she was nearly killed by a drunk driver.
Menzel said she approached Landau with her idea because Landau co-wrote with composer Adam Guettel the 1996 musical “Floyd Collins.” It’s based on the true story of a solo Kentucky cave explorer who became fatally trapped underground in 1925.
Landau said she could see how Menzel connected the stories of Collins and Hill.
“‘Redwood’ is a reflection, a callback, a further echo of ‘Floyd Collins’,” Landau said. “Floyd is about a man who goes searching for his destiny and fate below ground and ‘Redwood’ is about a women searching for release and healing by going above ground.”
Menzel said the day she first met with Landau to discuss the project, she knew she’d found the perfect creative partner.
“It turned out she had a fascination and love for trees and her whole office was decorated with pictures of trees.”
Idina Menzel in rehearsal at La Jolla Playhouse for the world premiere musical “Redwood.”
(Courtesy of Samantha Laurent)
Nonetheless, the project didn’t come together and was shelved as both women moved on to other projects.
In 2013, Menzel became a global superstar as the voice of Elsa in Disney’s “Frozen” film (her high-flying anthem “Let it Go” has been streamed more than 800 million times), and in 2014, she earned her third Tony nomination for starring in the Broadway musical “If/Then” (she won a Tony in 2004 for playing Elphaba in “Wicked” and another nomination in 1996 for “Rent”). She has also worked steadily as a recording and concert artist, in television and films.
Landau co-adapted and directed the Broadway musical “SpongeBob SquarePants,” which earned 12 Tony nominations, including one for Landau’s direction in 2018. She’s also the director of “A Transparent Musical,” inspired by the Amazon streaming series about a family adjusting to a parent’s transition from patriarch to matriarch, which may head to Broadway later this year.
It was the pandemic, which shut down the arts world for nearly 18 months, that gave Menzel and Landau the time to dig back into the redwood musical — but with a new, fictional plot partially inspired by events in their own lives.
“One of the silver linings of that period of being stuck in my house in Connecticut, surrounded by trees, was I returned to writing,” Landau said. “And also, in the spring of 2020, I lost a nephew to an accidental overdose. It was the combination of those things — being alone and contemplating what was going on in the world and the nature around me and in my own life.”
Menzel said that she, too, had experienced things in her life in the intervening years that made the idea of creating the fictional character Jesse more appealing than a story about the politics of logging and playing the 23-year-old Hill.
“As Tina and I came back to it, we realized that it would be more impactful if we told a more intimate story in this majestic setting, which I found strikes this extraordinary balance,” she said. “For me, it was about me just being a mother and also a woman that is a career woman that keeps going and going and going and sometimes imagines what it would feel like to drop everything and start again. What am I capable of?”
“Redwood” begins with a road trip, as Jesse makes her way across the country. Landau said that mirrors a trip she and her partner made from Connecticut to Del Mar and La Jolla at the end of 2020. On the way, they spent some time among the California redwoods, which she said was “instrumental” for the development of the script.
Tony nominee Tina Landau in rehearsal at La Jolla Playhouse for the world premiere musical “Redwood.” Landau co-conceived the musical and is also its bookwriter, co-lyricist and director.
(Courtesy of Samantha Laurent)
Growing a ‘Redwood’
As they shaped the story for their musical, Menzel and Landau knew they wanted to do something new and innovative. They searched for a non-Broadway composer and imagined a production design that avoided the obvious cliché of creating a fake forest onstage.
“We wanted a female composer who hasn’t been in the Broadway community that would be a fresh voice for all of us,” Menzel said of Diaz. “We found Kate … and she wrote some music for us and we were blown away.
“Kate has this uncanny ability to write beautiful melodies and also music that really feels like a film score sometimes. I feel like her style … challenges me but it really complements me as well. Nobody’s ever heard a musical like this,” said Menzel, who in 2022 co-wrote with Diaz and sang the haunting title song for the HBO documentary “A Tree of Life: The Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting.”
As for the design of “Redwood,” Landau prefers to keep that a secret for audiences to discover. Rather than a literal re-creation of the redwoods, the show’s design will feature groundbreaking scenic design, multimedia projections and movement intended to envelop the actors and audience in a forest of the mind.
“We’re trying to create an experience in the theater that’s not really about being in the redwoods, as much as it is about being in Jesse’s point of view experience in the redwoods,” Landau said. “We’re creating very transportive experience.”
Landau said she’s grateful to be working with Menzel on the project and thinks audiences will be surprised and impressed by what Menzel will bring to this production.
“Idina has tremendous range, not only as a singer but as an actor,” Landau said. “This role, I think, calls on her to live fully in many kinds of outer regions of emotion. I just think Idina has a complexity and soulfullness and humor. She’s funny as all heck. That’s been something that’s been important in flavoring the character. This role will let Idina have free range into the outer limits of experience and emotion, because she has all that in her.”
And Menzel said she’s excited to tell both Jesse’s inspiring story and a story about preserving the magnificent redwood forests.
“It’s really about resilience and strength and hope and how to keep on living in the face of adversity,” Menzel said. “I’m also glad to be working on this at a time like this in our world, where we need to care about our Earth. I feel strongly that it hopefully will make a difference in the way people see nature’s ability to heal us and inspire a passion to take care of the redwoods.”
‘Redwood’
When: Now in previews through Feb. 24. Opens Feb. 25 and runs through March 31. Show times vary.
Where: Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, 2910 La Jolla Village Drive, La Jolla
Tickets: Sold out, but small lots of tickets will be released during the run.