MENDOCINO CO., 5/9/25 — If you fly to New York City from Mendocino County, starting your trip with a drive through the Navarro Redwoods, surviving an FAA-directed landing, and ending in a jetlagged stupor in a NYC hotel room at midnight, what should you do the next day?
Go see Redwood, of course, the new musical starring Idina Menzel and a giant redwood she names Stella.
Locals from the North Coast may get more out of the show than a typical audience member.
Menzel plays a grief-stricken mother, Jesse, who flees her urban New York life as an art gallery owner after the unexpected death of her 23- year-old son, leaving behind her equally devastated wife and going on a road trip in search of solace.
Jesse ends up in Eureka, where she finds two Berkeley-based arborists Finn (Michael Park) and Becca (Khaila Wilcoxon) studying the ability of the 300-foot redwood that has somehow been created on the stage to sequester carbon. Despite climbing experience limited to holding a tree pose in yoga and watching YouTube videos, Jesse outfits herself in an excessive amount of outdoor gear and begs Finn and Becca to let her make an ascent. They finally agree not only to teach Jesse to climb but to let her spend several nights on her own high up in the canopy.
Through it all, Menzel and the cast, rounded out by De’Adre Aziza playing Jesse’s wife, Mel, and Zachary Noah Piser playing their lost son, Spencer, sing. Menzel (who won a Tony Award for her portrayal of Elphaba in “Wicked,” tortured parents whose children insisted on watching her play Elsa in “Frozen” approximately 1000 times, and contributed to the story of “Redwood”) belts out her songs while dancing with the tree, often upside down. She reportedly warms up by singing on an elliptical machine before every show. Park and Wilcoxon make their scurrying up and down the giant tree look easy but they, along with Menzel, are all actually climbing on stage, complete with safety checks.
The set is augmented by surrounding LED panels with photographs and video similar to what North Coast residents may have taken with their own cameras on trips to Montgomery Woods (32 miles southeast of Mendocino) or along the Avenue of the Giants in Humboldt County. The trees actually rustle; at times Stella even seems to be speaking. Stills from the documentary on Julia Butterfly Hill (Butterfly, 2000), the activist and tree sitter who spent over two years in the canopy of another named tree, Luna, to prevent it being logged, will also resonate, especially if the prepared theatergoer streams the movie beforehand.
References that visitors to real redwoods will recognize abound. Finn and Becca are working against time on limited grant funding. At one point a fast-moving fire threatens the forest. Jesse, though, is safe in the canopy. The experts offer primers on the intertwined roots of the trees, the durability of their heartwood and the vast amount of human history that has passed by as an old-growth redwood remains.
So it should come as no surprise to locals that Bandaloop, the vertical dance company that did choreography and rigging for the New York musical, also launched the career of Kara Starkweather, artistic director of the Mendocino Dance Project, which puts on a stunning performance dancing on real trees in Mendocino County every summer.
There are some corny moments. It’s a Broadway musical of resilience and healing. But the message that these trees are sacred comes through loud and clear.
Can Broadway really put a redwood on stage? Hurry if you want to see it. The show runs through May 18, 2025, at the Nederlander Theater, 208 W. 41st Street, New York, NY.