Shortly before a run-through of her new Broadway musical, \u201cRedwood,\u201d Idina Menzel reflected on her performing roots that stretch back to Long Island.<\/p>\n
\u201cBaylis Elementary, third grade,\u201d she said during a Zoom chat from the Nederlander Theatre, where the show opens Thursday. \u201cThat was my very first solo in the choir.\u201d The song? \u201cEdelweiss.\u201d<\/p>\n
Covering this sweetly melodic tune from \u201cThe Sound of Music\u201d was just the beginning for the actress and singer with star-dusted memories of her childhood and school days in Syosset.<\/p>\n
In fourth grade, she clicked her heels three times as Dorothy in \u201cThe Wizard of Oz.\u201d In a high school production of \u201cCarousel, she played Nettie, a supporting character who sings \u201cYou\u2019ll Never Walk Alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not landing the lead role of Julie Jordan in the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic stung, Menzel admitted. She recalled the director telling her that Nettie’s\u00a0emotionally heavy number \u201cneeded the maturity of her voice\u201d and how that reassurance didn\u2019t ease the ache. \u201cI was, like, \u2018Whatever.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n
Flash-forward to today: At 53, Menzel is a celebrated stage and screen star thanks to a series of blockbuster projects and attention-getting roles, including her character in “Redwood.” After a decade away from Broadway, Menzel shoulders the new show as Jesse, a New York gallery owner and mom in upheaval who leaves her home with no particular destination in mind.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s just running toward the sun,\u201d Menzel said. \u201cShe doesn\u2019t know where she\u2019s going to end up.\u201d Jesse lands in Northern California where she finds a steadying source of healing in the majestic forests.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a very intimate story with only five actors in the cast,\u201d said Menzel, adding that the tone of the musical is \u201cpoetic and impressionistic.\u201d<\/p>\n
FAIRY TALE ELEMENTS<\/h3>\n
“Redwood” comes nearly 30 years after Menzel’s breakthrough on Broadway.\u00a0After singing as a teenager at bar mitzvahs and birthday parties on Long Island and going to college at New York University, she landed the part\u00a0of\u00a0Maureen Johnson in 1996 in the Pulitzer Prize-winning rock musical \u201cRent.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2003 she earned a best actress Tony Award and became a girl-power role model as the gravity-defying green witch Elphaba in \u201cWicked.\u201d Her cameo appearance alongside Kristin Chenoweth, Broadway\u2019s original Glinda, in the new movie added an extra twinkle to the Emerald City.<\/p>\n
Menzel also helped create Elsamania in 2013 by belting \u201cLet It Go\u201d in Disney\u2019s Oscar winner \u201cFrozen.\u201d (She also weathered a weird, unwanted blizzard of publicity when John Travolta referred to her as \u201cAdele Dazeem\u201d at the Academy Awards in 2014. Enough said about that.)<\/p>\n
Like “Wicked” and “Frozen,” the story in “Redwood” also has fairy tale-like elements, said director and book writer Tina Landau. \u201cJesse goes into the woods,\u201d Landau told Newsday. \u201cShe doesn’t know what she will find there and ends up encountering people and obstacles and adventures that lead her to change.\u201d<\/p>\n
To prepare for the show Menzel trekked to the West Coast and immersed herself in the towering, ancient conifers. \u201cI went several times,\u201d she said. \u201cI worked with a renowned tree climber, activist and botanist. His name\u2019s Tim Kovar, and he took me up to the canopy. I actually practiced my songs from the treetop. He got a little concert.\u201d<\/p>\n
WOODSY WALLPAPER<\/h3>\n
Trees now loom large in her Nederlander dressing room, the same home away from home she had during \u201cRent.\u201d Then she shared it. Now it\u2019s all hers. Menzel had the room spruced up with redwood forest wallpaper.<\/p>\n
Asked what treasures she keeps in her offstage space, Menzel deadpans, \u201cI\u2019m not one to pat myself on the back. I\u2019m not going to have a \u2018Frozen\u2019 platinum album in here.\u201d<\/p>\n
She does have photos of her husband, Aaron Lohr, and her 15-year-old son, Walker, whom she shares with ex-spouse and former \u201cRent\u201d co-star Taye Diggs.<\/p>\n
Menzel, like fellow production members, literally learned the ropes for \u201cRedwood.\u201d \u201cWe\u2019ve all become certified climbers,\u201d she said. The special skill comes in handy for an aerial sequence.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have this incredible vertical dance group called BANDALOOP,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re our choreographers, and they\u2019ve taken us climbing as well. I can\u2019t wait for people to see this work that we’re doing in the show. We\u2019re not getting Peter Pan\u2019d around. We\u2019re working hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of Menzel\u2019s most profound takeaways from this project is tied to what she\u2019s learned about the history and structure of redwoods. \u201cThey\u2019re survivors,\u201d Menzel said. \u201cThey have been around for a thousand years, and they\u2019ve seen everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
She marveled, in particular, at the skyscraping giants\u2019 root systems, which, surprisingly, don\u2019t run very deep. They\u2019re actually shallow, wide-spreading and interconnected with nearby trees. \u201cThey kind of clasp each other\u2019s hands,\u201d Menzel said. \u201cThey sustain each other and hold each other up.\u201d<\/p>\n
The theme of community, mutual support and resilience tolls eloquently in the story of Jesse, a lost woman who finds herself after making a \u201cGreat Escape.\u201d That\u2019s the telling title of a song from the show.<\/p>\n
Menzel acknowledged she\u2019s thought about taking flight from her life. \u201cYeah, I think everyone has that impulse,\u201d she said, adding that she\u2019s grappled with \u201cfeeling so much of my worth depends on the state of my voice and the roles that I take. I often feel like I just want to press the pause button.\u201d<\/p>\n
With \u201cRedwood,\u201d Menzel isn\u2019t idling, she\u2019s actually branching out. The show marks a significant creative change for Menzel, who\u2019s credited for conceiving the show with Landau, as well as for contributing additional material. The songs are by Broadway newcomer Kate Diaz.<\/p>\n
To Menzel, the added responsibility is as natural as breathing. \u201cI\u2019ve always been a songwriter and, so, a storyteller. I really hear characters from a musical place. So I really feel I have a lot to contribute to the making of a musical.\u201d<\/p>\n
This show has been in her brain for a long time. About 15 years ago she approached Landau with an idea inspired by the true story of Julia Butterfly Hill, an activist who\u2019s known for living in a California redwood tree to prevent its logging.<\/p>\n
While Menzel wasn\u2019t necessarily keen on telling a bio, the notion of a woman being a rule breaker and the power of nature struck her. It turned out that Landau, whose previous Broadway credits include the musical \u201cSpongeBob SquarePants\u201d and \u201cMother Play,\u201d was cultivating her own concept involving a woman and trees.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe both had that in our minds and imaginations and hearts as a core image,\u201d said Landau. \u201cWe worked on what we thought was an idea for a show for a little while, but our lives took us in different directions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reunited at the start of the pandemic, they collaborated on the show that arrived on Broadway following a run a year ago at the La Jolla Playhouse.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first thing that drew me to this entire story was Hill\u2019s bravery and her courage and her fortitude,\u201d Menzel continued. \u201cI wondered, \u2018Would I be able to do something like that?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Menzel paused, then answered her own question. \u201cI\u2019ve been a fearful person and the glass-half-empty person in my life,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I think it’s pretty courageous to do this show. It\u2019s courageous to do any original show and tell a new story. You’re really putting yourself out there. So, I feel I can pat myself on the back for that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Shortly before a run-through of her new Broadway musical, \u201cRedwood,\u201d Idina Menzel reflected on her performing roots that stretch back to Long Island. \u201cBaylis Elementary, third grade,\u201d she said during a Zoom chat from the Nederlander Theatre, where the show opens Thursday. \u201cThat was my very first solo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1336,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[87,81],"class_list":["post-1383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews","tag-87","tag-redwood"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/idina-menzel-interview.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Srnq-mj","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1383"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1385,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1383\/revisions\/1385"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}