On the heart of a Broadway stage stand a redwood and a lady who needs to be alone in its branches to launch her grief.
That is the straightforward storyline of “Redwood,” a brand new musical written and directed by Tina Landau and starring Idina Menzel, well-known for her roles in “Hire,” “Depraved,” and “Frozen.”
It’s tempting to match who has the extra towering stage presence: Ms. Menzel together with her athletic voice, which might attain excessive notes as she swings the other way up from a rope; or the silent lifelike tree, whom she names Stella. Her hovering heights and high-tech options spotlight the creativity behind fashionable set design – and the function it performs in conveying a story onstage.
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When Idina Menzel is in a musical, she is without doubt one of the most talked-about stars onstage. In her newest, “Redwood,” Stella, a large tree, is vying for prime billing.
“It’s not your typical Broadway musical, and that’s what I like about it,” says scenic designer Jason Ardizzone-West in an interview. “‘Redwood’ … is speaking to us in a really unmusical theater means, in a considerate and complex emotional means.”
The opening half-hour of the present set a dizzying tempo. Jesse, performed by Ms. Menzel, spurred by her son’s dying, drives west from New York till she finds herself in a California forest. One thing has known as her there.
Telling the story of a lady in solitary anguish requires a fancy community of concepts, artists – and even the viewers to deliver it to life.
“It’s spectacular,” says Gayle Trocola, a theatergoer who sat near the stage throughout a current efficiency. “I wished to go contact the bushes.”
Stage and viewers “are one house”
“Redwood” is a ardour undertaking for each Ms. Landau and Ms. Menzel, one drawn out of their very own lives and pursuits. Ms. Menzel had lengthy wished to convey the true story of Julia Butterfly Hill, who lived for 738 days in a 200-foot-tall California sequoia to save lots of the 1,000-something-year-old tree from being minimize down. After her nephew died, Ms. Landau discovered consolation in the course of the pandemic gazing on the dancing boughs in her Connecticut yard. She journeyed together with her spouse to go to the California giants as a part of her therapeutic course of.
The present can also be a extremely collaborative effort between Mr. Ardizzone-West and video designer Hana S. Kim. A sequence of LED panels radiating outward affords one thing new to Broadway – a set designed round fragments of sunshine. Stella is the colorfully wealthy, hand-carved stoic tree within the heart. However she additionally pivots. Her again is a curved LED display that turns into a part of the continuously shifting encompass.
“I’m certain redwoods are superior in actual life; I’ve by no means seen one. However the tree that Landau and her designers have put onstage is among the many most lovely and wondrous theatrical creations I can recall,” Jesse Inexperienced wrote in a evaluate in The New York Occasions.
In the course of the present, on an in any other case sparse set, panels fill with metropolis scene-scapes, an open street, a starry night time, shafts of sunshine via the forest, flickering wildfire, the jagged edges of Jesse’s stressed psyche, and even her Google searches for “Butterfly Hill.” The design evokes the current development of immersive artwork displays that allow viewers to stroll into work displayed throughout flooring and partitions.
However Mr. Ardizzone-West rejects the phrase “immersive.” “The entire idea is that the stage and the audiences are one house. The people within the viewers are a part of the design of the room,” says Mr. Ardizzone-West, at New York College’s Tisch Faculty of the Arts, within the division of design for stage and movie, the place he’s guest-teaching for the day. “The phrase that I want is ‘embracing.’”
The theater’s moss-colored seats are a cheerful coincidence, he says. Sitting just a few rows from the stage – with Stella, and far of the motion rising overhead – provides viewers members the sensation they’re observant floor squirrels. The view from the mezzanine perches individuals among the many branches like birds. The video portrayals of the forest and motion are so practical they depart the woodland creatures, er, viewers, feeling woozy throughout a fast ascent.
The distinction between Stella’s presence and the fixed change of the video photos works collectively to border Jesse’s inward and outward odyssey from feeling haunted to being at peace.
Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
“A few of my favourite moments are after we’re on this very naturalistic evocation of a forest, after which swiftly we’ll crash into Jesse’s mind for a second. … It’s like a portal to the within of her emotional house,” says Mr. Ardizzone-West. “We will transfer with the velocity of sunshine in the best way that reminiscence can very instantly swap to one thing very scary or one thing tragic, or lovely.”
The imagery of roots
The most important redwoods can weigh 2.7 million tons and attain increased than the Statue of Liberty. However their roots don’t run deep; they attain outward and hyperlink with different bushes. That’s Ms. Landau’s favourite metaphor.
“Roots are a very powerful imagery for me within the present, how they attain throughout house and join. All of us want to search out commonality and maintain one another up,” Ms. Landau stated to a small viewers after a current present. Finally, that is what Jesse does, as she pulls power from her recollections – forming her personal heartwood, or core, like a redwood – and reconnects together with her spouse.
Ms. Menzel questioned aloud if she might be brave sufficient to climb and keep in a redwood tree. But additionally, she discovered herself bushes as a information.
“I fell in love with redwoods as a hovering instance of how I need to dwell my life,” she stated in the course of the after-show speak with representatives from companion organizations.
The ultimate music, “Nonetheless,” follows an evening Jesse spends on a platform suspended from Stella as a wildfire encroaches. It affords the ultimate launch of the 90-minute journey into the treetops. Mr. Ardizzone-West displays on what audiences are left with.
“It’s a few girl in a tree, however one of many classes is she’s not alone. And with a view to heal, she has to grasp her connections not simply to nature, however to the opposite individuals in her life, and to her reminiscence of her son. It’s a quite simple story, however it’s such a common and human story.”
“Redwood,” which opened on Broadway Feb. 13, will probably be carried out on the Nederlander Theatre via July 2025.
Editor’s be aware: This text has been up to date to right the spelling of Jason Ardizzone-West’s final identify.
