TDF Stages

The co-creators discuss collaborating with Idina Menzel on her first Broadway show in a decade

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Life-altering trauma, drug addiction and a climactic California wildfire—the new musical Redwood at Broadway's Nederlander Theatre explores some eerily timely themes. Yet the show, which stars Wicked Tony winner Idina Menzel as an anguished middle-aged woman seeking solace in a forest, has been gestating for two decades.

The seed for Redwood first took root in 2005, when Menzel reached out to writer-director Tina Landau (Floyd Collins, SpongeBob SquarePants) to chat about collaborating on an original musical tailored to the star's soaring voice and love of nature.

"Idina came to the meeting a little obsessed with a woman named Julia Butterfly Hill, an activist who lived in an old-growth redwood to protest the practices of the logging companies in the 1990s," Landau recalls. "And I came to the meeting a little obsessed with trees in general."

Their respective careers pulled the artists in different directions over the next decade and a half. But during the pandemic lockdown, Landau reached out to Menzel to see if she was still interested in working together. She was, so Landau began writing.

"I actually wrote three full, very detailed outlines of three very different shows, all coming from the concept of a woman in a tree," explains Landau, who's billed as Redwood's co-conceiver with Menzel as well as book writer, co-lyricist with composer Kate Diaz and director. "How did this woman get there? What would be her backstory? I gave those three treatments to Idina, and she helped me land on the most resonant and pure idea."

That idea centers on Jesse (Menzel), a successful but unsettled middle-aged New Yorker who flees her family and drives across the country with no destination in mind. She winds up in Eureka, California, where she encounters two canopy botanists (Khaila Wilcoxon and Michael Park) who teach her how to care for and climb the titular trees. Jesse's journey is physical as well as emotional as she climbs high up in an arbor to avoid processing the personal loss that prompted her to abandon her life.

It's an original story, not adapted from existing IP like most Broadway musicals these days. That's why Landau wanted a composer with a singular sound and no theatre experience. After researching potential collaborators online, she asked Diaz, who had written for film and television, to submit a demo song. That number, "Great Escape," is still in the show, which had a pre-Broadway tryout at California's La Jolla Playhouse last year.

Diaz's versatility is what appealed to Landau, who describes the composer's work as "a real pop-rock, alt, contemporary, accessible sound," which she believed could communicate the feel of the forest. "I always thought of the show as having sequences that were just instrumental, moments that would actually go beyond words and be expressed in a piece of music," Landau says.

Diaz says her approach was often to write for the scenery, which includes a massive redwood trunk (designed by Jason Ardizzone-West) surrounded by LED screens that conjure an immersive forest experience through Hana S. Kim's evocative videos. "The trees sing in the show, especially the redwoods," she says. "They're so huge and awe inspiring, but they're also peaceful and simple in a lot of ways. When you go out into nature, you're so inspired by the majesty of it all, but you feel very internal and kind of small. I think when scoring the trees, that was really what I kept in mind: huge moments that are also intimate moments."

Redwood marks Menzel's first Broadway show in ten years and Landau believes her character will surprise audiences. Menzel is known for playing strong female characters: Maureen in Rent, Elsa in Frozen, Elphaba in Wicked. But Landau wanted to go in a different direction.

"I was determined to write a role that exposed other sides of her," Landau says. Jesse "ranges from big and powerful, to intimate and vulnerable, to goofy and funny. I wanted to get all of that into it."

Writing music for Menzel, famous for her spectacular range and powerhouse pipes, is "kind of a dream," Diaz says. "We have these huge moments in the show, so you get the big belt that she's very much known for, but she also has such an incredible low register that is so rich and emotional. Playing with that was amazing."

Developing the show was a collaborative process. "She's always down to try whatever, which is awesome," Diaz says. "Every song I wrote for Jesse is tailored to Idina's voice but left room for embracing the riffs that are her signature—it's always really fun see what she comes up with."

Jesse spends much of the show in crisis, and Landau wanted to depict her wild and often conflicting emotions honestly and unapologetically. "The woman is just reeling, and there is a kind of self-absorption in those moments of high intensity or grief," Landau says. "She's flawed. I didn't stay away from anything that felt true."

That truth was particularly personal to Landau, who drew from her own life while writing Jesse's story, including the death of her nephew at the beginning of the pandemic. "Jesse is a combination of things I get from Idina in terms of her personality, her rhythms, her humor, and myself and the way I sometimes speak, a little fast and all over the place, and my sister, who lost her son," Landau explains. They all "coalesce into this character."

Zachary Noah Piser's character Spencer is inspired by Landau's late nephew. "What he is able to bring to that role definitely captures something of my nephew, and I feel very grateful," Landau says. "It's definitely cathartic. I've never done anything like this, written a show for someone, but it's been a really intense and beautiful journey in that way."

Another sensitive overlap between life and art: Many members of the cast and crew were forced to evacuate their West Coast homes due to wildfires while working on Redwood, which depicts a raging forest fire. The creative team continues to recalibrate those scenes out of respect to those who have been impacted.

"There were moments when I wondered, can we even do this? Is it appropriate?" Landau acknowledges. "Line by line, every time fire is mentioned was massaged in some way… I was so nervous about it, as were Idina and Kate. We all have connections to LA, and people started coming who had been in the fires. Almost all of them said the same thing: that it was healing for them, that it actually helped them."

And healing is at the heart of the show. "It's like The Wizard of Oz or Star Wars," Landau says. "It's the story of death to rebirth, dark to light."

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