OAKLAND, California – Idina Menzel was sitting on a bench in a California redwood grove, yearning for silence. It was late one autumn afternoon, and I had been trying for months to get her to meet me in a forest where we could discuss this musical she had been working on for 15 years about a woman in a tree, and now here we were.
On the drive to the forest from a dance studio where the American actress-singer had been practising singing upside down, because yes, this musical requires her to dance and sing while scaling a giant tree, she had been thinking about what she wanted to tell me about why she was making a show that is outwardly about redwoods – it is called Redwood – but also about a grieving woman’s search for sanctuary.
“I’m a little reticent to say, but I think I have a lot of noise in my own head as a person,” she told me as we settled in at Oakland’s Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park. “The idea of escaping and freeing yourself from your own pain or loneliness or confusion is very healing to me.”
In an entertainment industry where actors are lucky to have one career-defining role, Menzel already has three: Maureen, the rabble-rousing performance artist in Rent; Elphaba, the green-skinned who-are-you-calling-wicked witch in Wicked; and Elsa, the ice-conjuring queen in Disney’s animated Frozen films (2013 to present). Those characters have many strengths, but serenity is not one of them.
“I had to audition for all of those roles. I didn’t choose them – I needed a job. And yet, maybe somehow I attract them to me,” Menzel, 53, said.
“They’re fierce women, but I’m not afraid of making them very fragile at times. They’re also women – especially Elphaba and Elsa – who are afraid of their power. They’re afraid that they’re too much for people, and that their power will hurt people. And I think I feel that way in my life a lot. I’m too big. Too loud.”
Redwood, which is in previews on Broadway and is scheduled to open Feb 13, tells the fictional story of an anguished New York gallerist named Jesse, who embarks on an unplanned road trip and winds up near Eureka, California, where, awed by the soaring redwoods, she befriends a pair of canopy botanists and persuades them to let her stay on a platform high in a tree.
The musical, first staged in 2024 at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, not only features climbing, but is also technologically ambitious, with more t...