Idina Menzel returns to Broadway in “Redwood”

Final fall, when celebrity Idina Menzel wasn’t in New York, she frolicked in Oakland, Calif. At Bandaloop Studios, she was studying to bop suspended on the finish of a rope … and this from a girl who says she is not a lot of a dancer on the bottom. “I do not know what I am doing!” she exclaimed.

However if you see precisely why she was doing this, it instantly all is smart.

Within the new Broadway musical “Redwood,” the viewers is transported to the center of the redwood forest, and seemingly into the bushes themselves. It is loosely impressed by a girl named Julia Butterfly Hill, who, within the late ’90s, spent greater than two years dwelling in a thousand-year-old redwood to reserve it from being lower down. Her effort labored: the tree was saved.

And now, Menzel and writer-director Tina Landau are taking their very own leap of religion with an concept they have been kicking round for greater than a decade. 

Requested if she was ever frightened that their experiment would fail, Landau mentioned, “Sure, I am nonetheless frightened. I did not know. Nevertheless it was a kind of ardour tasks for each myself and Idina the place it was similar to, let’s simply belief that what is supposed to occur will occur.”

“Redwood” is a couple of workaholic mother who runs away from all of it, and finds herself within the redwood forest the place her life is modified ceaselessly.

One of many themes of the present is predicated on the truth that 300-foot redwoods really help one another. Landau mentioned, “Their roots solely go 5 – 6 ft into the bottom. Their roots go sideways as an alternative of down, till they attain the roots of different bushes, and so they intertwine with these. So, all of the bushes find yourself holding one another up.”

To take heed to Idina Menzel carry out “Nice Escape,” from the musical “Redwood,” click on on the video participant under:

The musical, which is at the moment in previews, is all-new, however Menzel is on acquainted floor. She’s performing on the Nederlander Theatre, which is similar theatre the place she opened in “Hire” in 1996. “Yeah, it is like a homecoming for me. It is full circle. It’s totally emotional for me. Once I did ‘Hire,” that was the primary skilled job I ever had – and it was a Broadway present. So, I used to be super-lucky. That was a wonderful time in my life.”

It was stunning. She was 25 years previous, and her efficiency in “Hire” put her squarely on the map, with a Tony Award nomination. “I received a file deal that I all the time needed to get,” she mentioned. “I needed to be signed to a file label so badly and make my very own album, and I did. And that was a dream come true. However then I solely offered, like, three albums. So, then I received dropped from the label. After which by that point, my complete type of momentum of being this Tony-nominated actress from the hit musical ‘Hire,’ it type of dissipated. After which I needed to type of preserve pounding the pavement once more. It wasn’t till ‘Depraved’ that issues began to essentially lookup once more.”

As the unique Depraved Witch Elphaba in Broadway’s “Depraved,” Menzel received a Tony, and helped flip the present right into a mega-hit, although it wasn’t all the time straightforward being inexperienced. Requested what Elphaba gave her, Menzel replied, “Inexperienced ears for the remainder of my life!”

Idina Menzel performs “Defying Gravity” from “Depraved” on “The Late Present With David Letterman”:

After which, she was an animated princess in Disney’s “Frozen,” singing the tune that hundreds of thousands of would-be princesses could not get out of their heads. “My relationship with ‘Let It Go’ is fabulous,” she mentioned. “It is top-of-the-line issues that is ever occurred to me. Folks all the time say, ‘Do you get sick of a tune like that?’ And perhaps they suppose I am mendacity to you, however I actually do not.”

Idina Menzel, as Elsa, performs “Let It Go” in “Frozen”:

“Once I was just a little woman, if I’d have dreamt that I might be up there singing a tune like this, I would not have believed it. Or, no, I would have, ‘trigger I actually was very cocky once I was little, and I really, you recognize, believed in myself and thought, ‘Undoubtedly, it is positively gonna occur for me.'”

However the job of writing Menzel’s subsequent large tune went to somebody who’d by no means written for a giant Broadway star (or for anybody). “Redwood” is composer Kate Diaz’s very first present, however you’d by no means comprehend it. Requested what it is like to jot down for The Idina Menzel, Diaz mentioned, “It is superb. I had by no means written for anyone else earlier than, so good spot to start out, for positive! What an unimaginable voice to jot down for.”

I requested, “Is there just a little a part of you that is like, ‘Let me simply see if she will be able to do this’?”

“I imply, she often can,” Diaz replied, “So, not likely.”

And she will be able to do it on demand, as she demonstrated within the new “Depraved” movie the place she introduced again her traditional vocal riff.

Her new present gives a special strategy to go inexperienced: an immersion in a leafy redwood forest. Even the seats within the newly-remodeled Nederlander are inexperienced. For Menzel it is nearly laborious to consider: “It is simply so uncommon that you just get to see it come to fruition after so a few years, and so they’re actually loading issues into the Nederlander as we converse. That accomplishment is not misplaced on me, and it is simply, I am so emotional about it.  

And now she’s hoping to defy gravity, once more. “However I feel inexperienced and being excessive, flying, actually or figuratively, is simply one thing that I need to reply to or entice in my life, in my characters,” Menzel laughed. “And I am type of pleased with that!”

Watch an prolonged interview with Idina Menzel:

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Story produced by John D’Amelio. Editor: Steven Tyler.