Idina Menzel returns to Broadway in “Redwood”

Last fall, when superstar Idina Menzel wasn’t in New York, she hung out in Oakland, Calif. At Bandaloop Studios, she was learning to dance suspended at the end of a rope … and this from a woman who says she isn’t much of a dancer on the ground. “I don’t know what I’m doing!” she exclaimed.

But when you see exactly why she was doing this, it suddenly all makes sense.

In the new Broadway musical “Redwood,” the audience is transported to the heart of the redwood forest, and seemingly into the trees themselves. It’s loosely inspired by a woman named Julia Butterfly Hill, who, in the late ’90s, spent more than two years living in a thousand-year-old redwood to save it from being cut down. Her effort worked: the tree was saved.

And now, Menzel and writer-director Tina Landau are taking their own leap of faith with an idea they’ve been kicking around for more than a decade. 

Asked if she was ever worried that their experiment would fail, Landau said, “Yes, I’m still worried. I didn’t know. But it was one of those passion projects for both myself and Idina where it was just like, let’s just trust that what is meant to happen will happen.”

“Redwood” is about a workaholic mom who runs away from it all, and finds herself in the redwood forest where her life is changed forever.

One of the themes of the show is based on the fact that 300-foot redwoods actually support each other. Landau said, “Their roots only go five or six feet into the ground. Their roots go sideways instead of down, until they reach the roots of other trees, and they intertwine with those. So, all the trees end up holding each other up.”

To listen to Idina Menzel perform “Great Escape,” from the musical “Redwood,” click on the video player below:

The musical, which is currently in previews, is all-new, but Menzel is on familiar ground. She’s performing at the Nederlander Theatre, which is the same theatre where she opened in “Rent” in 1996. “Yeah, it’s like a homecoming for me. It’s full circle. It’s very emotional for me. When I did ‘Rent,” that was the first professional job I ever had – and it was a Broadway show. So, I was super-lucky. That was a beautiful time in my life.”

It was beautiful. She was 25 years old, and her performance in “Rent” put her squarely on the map, with a Tony Award nomination. “I got a record deal that I always wanted to get,” she said. “I wanted to be signed to a record label so badly and make my own album, and I did. And that was a dream come true. But then I only sold, like, three albums. So, then I got dropped from the label. And then by that time, my whole kind of momentum of being this Tony-nominated actress from the hit musical ‘Rent,’ it sort of dissipated. And then I had to kind of keep pounding the pavement again. It wasn’t until ‘Wicked’ that things started to really look up again.”

As the original Wicked Witch Elphaba in Broadway’s “Wicked,” Menzel won a Tony, and helped turn the show into a mega-hit, though it wasn’t always easy being green. Asked what Elphaba gave her, Menzel replied, “Green ears for the rest of my life!”

Idina Menzel performs “Defying Gravity” from “Wicked” on “The Late Show With David Letterman”:

And then, she was an animated princess in Disney’s “Frozen,” singing the song that millions of would-be princesses couldn’t get out of their heads. “My relationship with ‘Let It Go’ is fabulous,” she said. “It’s one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. People always say, ‘Do you get sick of a song like that?’ And maybe they think I’m lying to you, but I really don’t.”

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

“When I was a little girl, if I would have dreamt that I’d be up there singing a song like this, I wouldn’t have believed it. Or, no, I would have, ’cause I really was very cocky when I was little, and I actually, you know, believed in myself and thought, ‘Definitely, it’s definitely gonna happen for me.'”

But the task of writing Menzel’s next big song went to someone who’d never written for a big Broadway star (or for anyone). “Redwood” is composer Kate Diaz’s very first show, but you’d never know it. Asked what it’s like to write for The Idina Menzel, Diaz said, “It’s amazing. I had never written for anybody else before, so great place to start, for sure! What an incredible voice to write for.”

I asked, “Is there a little part of you that’s like, ‘Let me just see if she can do this’?”

“I mean, she usually can,” Diaz replied, “So, not really.”

And she can do it on demand, as she demonstrated in the new “Wicked” film where she brought back her classic vocal riff.

Her new show offers a different way to go green: an immersion in a leafy redwood forest. Even the seats in the newly-remodeled Nederlander are green. For Menzel it’s almost hard to believe: “It’s just so rare that you get to see it come to fruition after so many years, and they’re literally loading things into the Nederlander as we speak. That accomplishment isn’t lost on me, and it’s just, I’m so emotional about it.  

And now she’s hoping to defy gravity, again. “But I think green and being high, flying, literally or figuratively, is just something that I must respond to or attract in my life, in my characters,” Menzel laughed. “And I’m kind of happy with that!”

Watch an extended interview with Idina Menzel:

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