Redwood Broadway Reviews

Except that we don’t in fact want silence from a musical, and “Redwood” would make a dreary play. Happily, whenever its book drifts into familiar tropes of the genre, the songs pull it back to its wild and unsettled heart. Diaz’s rangy, propulsive music has immediate curb appeal but with a scary, questing quality that provides the necessary big endings without pat resolutions — a combination that hits Menzel’s sweet spot over and over. The other characters also get strong defining numbers, all beautifully sung.

This impressive feat, performed during a climactic song, “In the Leaves,” marks a highlight of a show that is sparsely populated by such energizing moments. Directed by Tina Landau, who also wrote the book and lyrics—the latter in collaboration with Kate Diaz, who composed the music—“Redwood” is a technologically sophisticated but earnest and formulaic slab of musical uplift, a heroine’s journey from despair to emotional regeneration.

In her musical theater bow, composer Kate Diaz helps in making us see the forest from the tree. Her songs and underscoring are of a singular, reflective piece, with rich melodies and evocative arrangements and orchestrations — though the lyrics lean toward the generic. “Great Escape” and “No Repair” are among the standout songs using Menzel’s own force-of-nature notes in strategic ways. The show’s climax, while not particularly surprising, is honestly earned and emotionally charged in the heart-healing song, “Still,” powerfully sung by Piser.

There’s trauma after trauma. Yet what’s so puzzling about “Redwood” is that it’s a textbook tearjerker — a mom in mourning rediscovering herself midair, weighty speeches about losing everything — that leaves your eyes totally dry. The closest the musical comes to being remotely affecting is a quiet song toward the end called “Still,” beautifully sung by Zachary Noah Piser as Spencer. Jesse’s winding explanation for her son’s death should be scrapped and completely rewritten, but Piser has a velvet voice and an easily emotional presence regardless.

I don’t care how balsa-weak that joke is (will I be the 14th hack to use it, or the only one lacking self-restraint?). Redwood rhymes with deadwood, the derogatory term for people or things that no longer serve a function. Menzel has plenty to give. She could be the greatest squandered resource on Broadway in decades, which makes this well-intentioned misfire more frustrating: they are literally hanging Menzel out to dry.

Where Redwood really shines is in the physical. As she proved with the underrated SpongeBob SquarePants, Landau has a fine sense for spectacle, and much of this show is lovely to look at. Hana S. Kim’s video design, rendered on tall and curved LED columns, has a vertiginous majesty, and the gigantic central tree, designed by Jason Ardizzone-West and lit by Scott Zielinsky, is a wonder. As in 2007’s unfortunate King Kong, the colossal title character of Redwood (whom Jesse christens Stella) is the best thing about this musical, even though—or maybe because—it doesn’t sing. But arboreal splendor can’t compensate for the blandness that surrounds it. The show is all bark and no bite.

Menzel does get to do some gravity-defying climbing—the Bay Area–based troupe Bandaloop provided the show’s “vertical choreography”—and show off her impressive, rangey voice. But all the vocal pyrotechnics on Broadway can’t help this Redwood grow.

Redwood might have been more effective with a powerful score, but the songs, composed by Kate Diaz and featuring lyrics by Diaz and Landau, all have a similar power-ballad sheen that quickly proves repetitious and unmemorable. That’s not to say that Menzel doesn’t sing the hell out of them, which she does. But her powerhouse vocals can only do so much with numbers that aren’t exactly “Defying Gravity” or anything from Rent, in which she appeared in the same theater nearly three decades earlier. The performer sings and acts her heart out, but you still leave the theater humming the projections.

"Redwood" certainly means well, and with the renewed bout of "Wicked" hysteria, audiences will likely flock to see Menzel's much-ballyhooed return to her theatrical roots. But for a musical that should soar, it most often feels dreadfully earthbound.

Redwood doesn’t feel like a disaster, nor did it have to be. There’s enough genuine passion in Menzel’s commitment, to the role and the overall project, to power a solid show. But none of its ideas or characters are given space to coalesce into anything meaningful, with blandly inspirational songs crowding out an ecosystem that would better thrive on more organic soil.

That awesome and fascinating tree turns “Redwood” into a kind of poetry, albeit a lyrical poem rather than a narrative one. Which is a sensitive way of saying, no, “Redwood” is not a wholly satisfying Broadway musical, despite those striking visuals, as well some unusual vertical choreography and the glorious voices of the five talented cast members, who make the most of Broadway newcomer Kate Diaz’s 19 mostly serviceable musical numbers.

For nearly two hours, the Tony Award-winning icon -- surrounded by a superlative supporting cast of four – gets to frequently show off her still-breathtaking belt to tremendous effect. Unfortunately, it’s too often in the service of a generic pop-sounding, lyrically banal score by musical theatre newcomer Kate Diaz, with too many songs that simply reinforce emotions that have already been expressed and do little to advance the barely-there plot. Indeed, no matter how strikingly songs like “Great Escape” or “No Repair” are performed, there’s no number here like “Defying Gravity” or “Over the Moon” that Menzel’s admirers will want to hear for years (or decades) to come. Further, librettist and director Tina Landau’s frustrating, oddly structured book basically dares us to sympathize with Menzel’s self-absorbed, self-pitying character.

The high-tech staging thrills, as when Menzel spins upside down from her rope while belting a ballad. But the thin, repetitive story and composer/co-lyricist Kate Diaz’s score keep bringing the show back down to earth. The songs seem tailor-made for Menzel’s magnificent voice, but there’s an exhausting sameyness to these melisma-heavy pop ballads in which virtually every phrase goes up a third during the final word, like a bird that can’t quite decide where it should land. Menzel is a natural stage star, and there are moments when Redwood truly soars, but you can only defy the gravity of real life for so long.

“Redwood” deserves to gain accolades and recognition at the forthcoming 2025 Tony Awards; it should be up for everything (in every category it is eligible for), and it should be winning everything. “Redwood” garners 4.5 out of 5 stars. Well done.

Still, there are so few shows not derived from IP now, and the challenge of mounting anything so steeply uphill, that is difficult to root against what is ultimately a tough sell. Menzel, once a prize fighter of Broadway, takes a lot of swings and only connects some of them. The whole enterprise has the air of chasing ghosts, but there are moments – in a moving track about the impossibility of full healing, or an anxious breakdown – where the magic flickers again. Not enough, though, for a subject as monumental as a redwood, nor to convert New York audiences to, as one song puts it, Big Tree Religion.

Becca, wary of letting the inexperienced Jesse join their climbing efforts, is a foil to her colleague Finn (Michael Park), who is willing to bend the rules to do so. Their respective motivations — Becca's struggles as a Black woman in her industry despite her intelligence, Finn's own troubled relationship with his son and experience of familial loss — too, hint at character depth but are just as soon glossed over. Redwood broaches many potentially compelling topics, but, like the redwood tree, as we learn, its roots remain shallow.

Menzel has range, but Jesse doesn’t, and that’s Redwood’s chief failure. One moment she’s gregariously chatty and wisecracking, the next caustically defensive. Then she’s half-deliriously humming “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid. She’s also prone to PTSD-like flashbacks and quasi-hallucinations that sear across the stage with jolting sound and lighting effects. Menzel plays each of these individual moments convincingly, loosely tracing Jesse’s growing understanding that she can’t hide from her grief, but the music is too repetitive, the lyrics too broad, and the structure too airy for Jesse’s idiosyncrasies to ever cohere.

Menzel’s latest Broadway venture, another original musical, is even more adventurous. In “Redwood,” which opened Thursday at the Nederland Theatre, her character Jesse climbs a tree to escape the traumatic memories of her adult son’s death. As the title makes clear, it’s not just any old tree but a majestic redwood that grows in northern California, and, before the show is over, Stella — Jesse names the tree Stella — is threatened by wild fire. Beyond the word “adventurous,” one might also throw out “indulgent” to describe “Redwood.”