Idina Menzel returns to Broadway in ‘Redwood’ – Blogging Sole

Last fall, when star Idina Menzel wasn’t in New York, she was stuck in Oakland, California at Bandaloop Studios, learning to dance hanging at the end of a rope…and this from a woman who says she’s not much of a floor dancer. “I don’t know what to do!” I shouted.

But when you see exactly Why She was doing this, and suddenly everything made sense.

In the new Broadway musical “Redwood,” the audience is transported into the heart of a Redwood forest, seemingly in the trees themselves. It’s loosely inspired by a woman named Julia Brautfly Hill, who, in the late 1990s, spent more than two years living in a thousand-year-old roodwood to save it from being cut down. Her effort succeeded: the tree was saved.

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 like, let’s just trust that What’s supposed to happen will happen.”

“Redwood” is about a junkie mom who is addicted to everything, and finds herself in the Redwood Forest where her life changes forever.

One of the themes of the show is based on the fact that the 300-foot-tall 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 get to the roots of other trees, and they get tangled up with those. So, all the trees end up grabbing each other.”

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

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

He – she He 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 the record deal I always wanted to get,” she said. “I wanted to get signed to a record label so bad and make my own album, and I did that. And that was a dream come true. But then I only sold, like, three albums. So, then I fell off the label. And then by then, it was all I had.” The momentum of being the Tony-nominated actress from the successful ‘Rent Musical’ kind of dissipated and then I had to keep pounding the pavement again. It wasn’t until ‘Wicked’ that things started looking up again.

As the original evil witch Elphaba in “Wicked” on Broadway, Menzel won a Tony, and helped turn the show into a huge hit, though it wasn’t always easy being green. Asked what Elphaba gave her, “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 amazing,” she said. “It’s one of the best things that has ever happened to me. People always say, ‘Do you get sick of a song like that?’ And they probably 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 had dreamed of being up there singing a song like that, I wouldn’t have believed it. Or, no, I He was I have, ’cause I was really quite cocky when I was young, and I actually, you know, believed in myself and I thought, ‘Sure, it’s definitely going to happen for me.’ “

But the job of writing Menzel’s next song has gone to someone never Written for a big Broadway star (or anyone). “Redwood” is composer Kate Diaz’s debut feature, but you’d never know it. Asked what it’s like writing about Idina Menzel, Diaz said: “It’s amazing. I’ve never written for anyone else before, great place to start, for sure! What an incredible voice to write for.”

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

“I mean, usually you can,” Diaz replied, “so, not really.”

And she can do it on demand, as she demonstrates in the new movie Wicked where she brings back her classic vocal riff.

Her new offering offers a different way to go green: an immersion in a leafy Redwood forest. Even the seats in the newly-known Nederlander are green. For Menzel, it’s almost hard to believe: “It’s very rare to see it come to fruition after so many years, and they are literally loading things up at Nederlander as we speak. This achievement is not lost on me, and that’s fair, I’m very emotional about it.

Now hope to defy gravity, once again. “But I think green and soaring, flying, literally or figuratively, is just something that I have to give back or attract into my life, into my characters,” Menzel laughed. “And I’m kind of happy!”

Watch an extended interview with Idina Menzel:

For more information:

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