← MickeyJoTheatre
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
Mickey Jo
In her much anticipated return to Broadway after a decade, Tony Award winner Idina Menzel finds herself up a tree. Unfortunately, thereafter, both she and the show have nowhere to go. Oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you're listening on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre. I'm a professional theatre critic here on social media and I recently traveled to New York to see as many of the new spring Broadway openings as possible, including the new musical Redwood, currently playing at the Nederlander Theatre. Auspicious, because that is the same theatre where Idina Menzel was part of the original Broadway company of Rent, the genre redefining musical from the late Jonathan Larson that hugely impacted a generation and became a cultural phenomenon. That was a show with vibrant, dynamic and theatrical material. A great story to tell, a rich story to tell, a brilliant and diverse cast of intriguing characters. Redwood, three decades later at the same theatre unfortunately offers us none of that and I'm going to let you know why, along with all of my thoughts and feelings about the show in today's review. But as always, I would love to know yours as well. If you have already seen Redwood on stage, either on Broadway or during its pre Broadway world premiere tryout, let us know what you thought of the show in the comments section down below. And as always, if you enjoy listening to what I have to say, make sure that you're subscribed right here on YouTube with the notifications turned on so that YouTube lets you know every time I share a new video, whether it's a review, a theatre going vlog, or a juicy piece of news, or if it's easier for you, make sure you are following me on podcast platforms. In the meantime, while doing our best to avoid damaging a complex system of roots, let's dig in to Redwood. So let's do our best to straddle what little there is of a narrative here. The background to this is that as I was hearing about this show, I was hearing, you know, Idina Menzel back on stage, new musical and the set involves trees and the story involves treason. It's Adina and it's trees. And I was so ready for this to begin perform performances so that we could find out a little bit more about what this actually was beyond Idina Menzel and Treece come to find out that that's really all that it is. It is Idina Menzel and and trees. And it's not that I have anything against either of those things, you know, I'm a big fan of Idina Menzel and. And trees too, I guess. You know, they've both done a lot for the ecosystem. And yet you sort of feel as though a new musical ought to be giving us a little bit more in terms of substance. But the About a woman whose name is Jesse. I had to look that up because I'd absolutely forgotten. And she, at the beginning of the show, is fleeing from some sort of personal chaos that we aren't quite able to discern at this time. She is seeing traumatizing memories of her partner, as well as a young man who we sort of understand to be her son. But she is driving through the night and she is escaping, and she is fleeing from the chaos in her wake. And she is driving away from New York. She is a Jewish woman from Long Island. Go figure. And she is heading out into the night in search of. She knows not quite what, but she finds herself, in any case, in a forest clearing amongst these redwood trees and beneath an enormous, tall, majestic redwood tree, where she happens upon two conservationist scientists who are doing research around the tree, who let her know that this is a private protected area and she's not actually allowed to be there. However, she quickly develops this sort of an emotional connection to the tree and she feels drawn to it and she wants to reconnect with nature. She feels sort of as though she needs to ground herself in the midst of this crisis that she's going through eventually, with her returning to the area day after day and trying to build a little bit more of a rapport with these two conservationists, one of whom is perfectly happy to indulge her, the other of whom resents her presence and her interference entirely, she lets them know that she is in mourning for the death of her young son and that she has fled her life, her relationship, and her responsibilities as she is approaching. I believe it's the one year anniversary of his death. Now, in lieu of really wanting to unpack this or discuss it at length or return the many anxious and irritated phone calls from her partner, what Jessie feels as though she needs to do is to climb the tree along with these two conservationists who she watches climb up the tree in order to conduct their research. Once she finds out that there's a platform up there and that it might be possible for someone to sleep on it overnight, then she begs them to let her do that as well. And little by little, she basically negotiates her way up this enormous redwood tree. Eventually, with the help of the tree whose name that she learns Adina's character, Jesse, is able to confront her grief and get to a place where she can move forwards with her life. And it's in that idea, I suppose, of healing this personal wound via a connection with nature that some people may find some sort of emotional kinship here. I feel as though it doesn't really do enough in the narrative to transcend the specificity of her grief, grief and her circumstances and, you know, this woman's own journey and this very specific place that she's in right now for it to feel like it's going to resonate with anyone experiencing grief. I think you'd have to relate pretty personally and pretty specifically to her circumstances in order to feel seen and heard by this. But for those people who do, I'm sure that this has the capacity to be very powerful and very personally affecting. For the most part, though, I just don't really know if there's a strong enough story here. And at its most basic, a musical needs two things to be successful. It needs a good story and good songs. And I would contend, disappointingly, that this doesn't really have either. The music has been written by Kate Diaz and this is their first time writing for the stage, with lyrics co written by Kate and director Tina Landau, who has co conceived the piece with Idina Menzel. More on that momentarily. And I obviously, obviously have nothing against contemporary musical theater and musical theater, that sounds more like contemporary music, which is something that Adina herself has championed throughout her career and throughout her time on stage. But this to me, just feels a little bit tuneless and lyrically doesn't really feel like it's offering these staggering insights into the grieving process or indeed into the majesty of her circumstances. Once she's climbed this tree, once she's looking out from this great height over the world and seeing things literally from a new vantage point. The score is also wildly unmemorable. And I would say in general with this production, there are going to be more visuals that stay with you than anything that you've heard. Now, I mentioned that Adina had co conceived the story with Tina Landau. It does feel that increasingly each time that she returns to the stage, the shows are becoming closer and closer to who she is. There's a lot in this character and in her identity that is familiar of Adina herself. Like I said, it's a Jewish woman from Long Island. She is a mother. She's living in New York, but finds herself heading west. Her partner Mel is playing by the actress Deidre Aziza. The casting here feels a Little familiar of the Maureen Joanne dynamic from Rent. There's a little of that present in their relationship as well. Her character is a photojournalist. This is a high pressure job that causes a little bit of friction in their relationship while the two of them are also coping with grief with the loss of the son that they raised together. The whole notion of Adina playing a woman in this particular chapter of her life, navigating a turning point feels very familiar of if then and, you know, good for her. One wanting to center women's stories very specifically in the work that she does and wanting to champion new voices in musical theater. She doesn't do big revivals on stage. She does new musicals once every decade or so. But I wonder if a little too much involvement and a little too much star power here has ultimately been detrimental to the piece because it does feel very shaped around her, like she's belting in this part of her voice. She sounds fantastic here, perhaps even better than I've heard her sound in years. And she's spent much of her career belting out these huge, powerful songs and having to sing this huge material, both because it's the shows that she was doing and the films that she was doing, but also because it's what she became known for. So you go see Idina in concert. You want to hear Wicked. You want to hear Frozen. And this way of singing, this way of belting certainly takes a toll on the voice. She sounds really great, really healthy here in Redwood, but she is belting in this part of her range. We're not singing up here. We're not singing all the way down there. We're going to belt in this part. Specific. She's also got her own hair on stage. She's dressed comfortably. She's wearing really comfortable shoes. And playing a character who is gutsy and feisty and a little quirky and charming and witty in a way that is familiar of herself. The boldest thing that she does on this stage is at a certain point, like the other cast members with her, she climbs up this tree and she is for a brief moment, belting while flying above the stage. Just like she did in her Tony Award winning performance in wicked just over 20 years ago, which, you know, is novel, but it doesn't make up for the fact that we barely have a plot here, at least not a plot that is fit in any way for musical theater. This might be an interesting play. There is nothing whatsoever about this story that says to me that it needs to be a musical. If Julia Roberts, 15 years ago, had wanted to do this as a film then. I get it. It feels a little bit like a Lifetime movie, like Eat, Pray, Tree, whatever. But essentially what we've done here is we have taken one compelling plot point, which is this woman fleeing from her life and feeling as though she has to climb a tree in order to find something that she needs subconsciously. And we have tried to shape an entire narrative around that, and we have tried to create around her and in her orbit characters who make sense, who don't really, or who don't feel like they're very well served by the narrative. And that, I think, is because we are so centered on her that we only experience them from her perspective. Her son Spencer, whenever she sees him, is just this sort of a spectral vision, familiar of next to normal. And we find out about all of his. His history and all of what depth he has from her recollections. Mel is a character who we experience exclusively via Jesse's memories of her and also a couple of voicemail messages and some very strained conversations. Then you have the two scientists, Finn and Becca. Finn is incredibly eager to let her know about everything that they're doing and the work, and excited to tell her about the redwood trees. And this is necessary for the narrative because really, he's telling us, the audience, about the redwood trees. And he, as well as doing this important work, is also struggling to connect to his son. And there's some development that happens there, but it happens almost entirely off stage, and we just find out about it after the fact. Becca, meanwhile, is a very passionate and a very educated and determined young woman who believes very strongly in the work that the two of them are doing, which is a big part of why she doesn't want Adina's character interfering in this. And in this context, in this relationship, Adina kind of turns into a Karen, who consistently goes above Becca's head to ask Finn for permission. Can she climb the tree? Can she sleep in the tree? Can she stay in the tree for days on end until she knows who she is again? And Becca, whose only real character flaw is perhaps being a little insensitive to this woman who is demonstrably going through a midlife crisis, gets punished by the narrative because even though she is this brilliant and educated young woman, the outcome of her encounter with Jessie is for her worldview to be challenged and for Becca to be questioned about whether or not she behaves as though she knows everything, which, in the context of their circumstances around these redwood trees, she sort of does. And yet, you Know, how dare she just try and do her job. The closest thing we really get to a bigger conversation than just this one woman's life is the imagery around how redwood trees are able to stand at the enormous height that they do and continue to stand and continue to grow. And it's not because they have extraordinarily deep roots. The roots are surprisingly shallow. It's because those roots are interconnected and they form a network. And there's a message here about holding each other up and supporting each other and creating community and, you know, creating. Creating pathways and links and people, which I guess ought to be the notion that triggers the emotional reawakening for Jesse. But ultimately it's staying in the tree through a storm and being fine. Now, if Jesse is the character at the epicenter of this interconnected network of emotional roots, it's interesting because she isn't so much an unreliable narrator protagonist, but she does feel a little like an irresponsible one. And there's not enough, really in the material to empower us as the audience to create and develop a perspective on whether or not she's doing the right thing. And whether or not, you know, what she's doing here is even healthy for her is even beneficial. Half of the challenge there being that we'd probably spend too long with no real sense of what exactly is going on. And speaking of too long, while this is a one act piece, it is a one hour and 55 one act piece. And there is such a great place that they could put an intermission in this show. It is my belief that they haven't put an intermission in here because people would leave and people would leave happily. People wouldn't be angrily storming out of the theater. People would have felt as though they'd got their money's worth. Because, let's be honest, a lot of those people are only at the Needlander Theater because of Idina Menzel. Someone left a very astute comment recently on another of my videos saying, I always said I would listen to Idina Menzel sing the Phone Book. And now I feel as though I have because it's this fascinating phenomenon where her celebrity after Rent, after Wicked, after Frozen, of course, is such that people are just going to this theater to listen to this woman with no regard for the story, with no regard for the character that she's playing. None of matters. The songs don't even matter. They just want to hear her sing loud noises. And the fact that she's kind of suspended in the air while doing that is extra special to some of them. The fact that it's the Needlander is extra special to some more of them. But they just want to hear her do that thing where she's like, nah. Like, that's all that they need her to do. And then they're satisfied. So if they put an intermission in, they would walk out happily and go and buy a corn dog. An equally foolish thing to do with their money. But I digress. Let's talk about the few things that I did enjoy about Redwood, those few striking moments. So, like I said, I do think that this has the capacity to resonate with some people. I think if, you know, there's a lot of personal overlap, that this might speak to you if you have experienced really similar things. I think it has the beginnings of a powerful conversation about grief and that, you know, the idea in and of itself is not a bad one. We just need a little more development there. We need other characters. We need a sense of subplot. We need for there to be tension that arises from other places. We need, I think, the ability to get to know her a little better before all of this. That being said, there is still charm in the story being told. I was engaged consistently. The best and most impactful and most striking moment of the show is when they climb this tree. Tree on stage. And this tree is revealed behind a screen. It rotates around. It is the trunk of this majestic redwood that continues up into the fly space. And occasionally, when the actors climb it, they are ascending all the way up into the flies, and then they disappear for extended periods. And what's particularly cool about this is they are doing the proper technical process on stage. They are repelling and belaying, and they are doing safety checks audibly for each other. These seem to be written into the script. I assume this is a condition of them being able to do it on stage without the presence of a stage manager, because they are securing each other into harnesses and making sure that everything has been done correctly. And then they scale this tree on stage, and there's a little bit of choreography in the air as they do it. That looks absolutely visually stunning. And it's really impressive. And, you know, I feel as though we're running out of, like, things that we've never seen happen on stage before. And that's certainly one of them. Tina Landau is the piece's director, but the vertical movement and vertical choreography is credited to Malicio Estrell, and Bandeloop, with Jennifer Webb, are also credited for Dream choreography. I want to talk a little bit about the set design as well, because it is mostly video screens for something that takes place so significantly in nature, with that being what little I knew about the show. I was sort of expecting to walk into the Needlander Theatre auditorium and feel like I was back at Shucked. And instead I was back at the who's Tommy because everything was just plain white with these lighting rigs extending up into the mezzanine section, which, incidentally, I think if you are going to go and see the show, is the best place to sit. Because these video screen panels up the set constitute the walls, but also the floor. And there are sections of the floor that rise, but the whole thing is spilling out from the stage in this technical marvel. The scenic design having been created by Jason Ardazzoni west and the video design upon those screens presumably having been created by Hannah S. Kim. And there are some gorgeous landscape views and the way that it's lit. Let's talk about the lighting design that's from Scott Zielinski. Absolutely stunning. All of these elements in collaboration with each other. The way that we create the sensation of through the upper branches and the leaves of these trees, this beautiful, beautiful imagery when we see the forest by daylight for the first time. It's gorgeous and it's a naturally theatrical and majestic and a breathtaking playing space. You just wish that we could do a slightly more compelling story there with better songs. And also because among those good ingredients that we have on stage are this cast. They are brilliantly talented, but they don't really have satisfying roles to dig into, even for a Medina. I don't think there are enough layers to this character. I don't know if that's because it's too proximal to who she is or because she doesn't want to, you know, do something more laborious eight times a week. I don't know what the driving force of this is, but it's a very sort of surface level view of grief. And she doesn't let everyone in her vicinity in on everything that she's going through. She doesn't really let us, the audience, in on it either. We are able to see and hear about her need and these forces that are driving her. She has to escape. She feels drawn to this. She has to climb this tree. She doesn't even fully understand why herself, but she is determined to. And there's a certain amount of charm in her conviction, but we aren't empowered to understand it because she doesn't understand it. And Michael park is plenty charming. And Kyla Wilcoxon is maybe a highlight of the production, and Zachary now a highlight, sounds fantastic, but doesn't have nearly enough meat in this character to really build anything. These characters are perhaps written to be not unlike trees, where even though they have each of them these years of history and trauma and emotional experience, we're only able to glimpse the exterior and the hard outer shell that they've created in order to protect themselves. But both in terms of its characters and in terms of its writing, the show lacks that juicy SAP that we need. We're coming towards the end of anything that I really know about trees here, but we need the sa us the SAP. And if we think of the show itself as a tree, stay with me on this metaphor. I'm going somewhere, I promise. Then it has some sense of scale, because there are stakes here. There is emotional height to the whole thing, with the grief that she is processing, with the little we get to find out about how other characters relate to this and with the glimpses that we get to see of her family. And we have leaves in the sense of something nice to look at. The video design work in particular that has been done here is just breathtaking. And the visuals of them climbing up this tree of Adina for a prolonged time being on this platform, that's all pretty visually staggering and exciting. But we have Leaves without Branches because the plot is this one continuous, fairly short idea that has been overextended. We don't have subplot, we don't have other directions in which to go. This one thing happens on stage, and it's novel, but it's not that great. In short, if you want to hear Idina Menzel make those impressive noises while climbing an actual tree on stage, you can currently find her at the Needle Land a theatre. But I do believe, though you are welcome to go and buy your ticket and make up your own mind as always, that it ranks as one of this season's more puzzling disappointments. Those, in any case, have been my thoughts about the new Broadway musical Redwood. As mentioned before, I would love to know what you thought. Let us all know in the comments section down below. And if you enjoyed listening to this review, make sure that you're following me on podcast platforms or subscribed right here on YouTube with notifications turned on so you don't miss any of my upcoming reviews. I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stage day for 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.