Idina Menzel returns to Broadway in “Redwood”

Last fall, when superstar Idina Menzel was not in New York, she hung out in Oakland, California. In Bandaloop Studios, she learned how to dance suspended at the end of a rope … and this from a woman who says she is not. Much of a dancer on the ground. “I don’t know what I’m doing!” she exclaimed.

But when you look exactly why She did it, it suddenly makes sense.

In the new Broadway musical “Redwood”, the audience is transported to the heart of the Redwood Forest and apparently into the trees themselves. It is loosely inspired by a woman named Julia Butterfly Hill, who in the late 90s spent more than two years in a thousand years old Redwood to save it from being felled. Her efforts worked: The tree was rescued.

And now Menzel and writer instructor Tina Landau are taking their own leaps of faith with an idea that they have been kicking around for more than a decade.

When 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 us just trust that what is meant to happen will happen. ”

“Redwood” is about a workaholic mother who runs away from it all and is in the Redwood Forest where her life has 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 down into the ground. Their roots go sidewalks instead of down until they reach the roots of other trees and they merge with them. So all the trees end up holding each other up . ”

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

The musical, which is currently on premiere, is brand new, but Menzel is on known ground. She performs at the Netherlands Theater, which is the same theater where she opened in “Clean” in 1996. “Yes, it’s like a return to me. It’s a full circle. It’s very emotional for me. When I made” clean “, It was the first professional job I ever had – and it was a Broadway show. So I was super lucky. It was a beautiful time in my life.”

The was beautiful. She was 25 years old and her performance in “Rent” put her completely on the map with a Tony Award nomination. “I got a record deal that I’ve always wanted to get,” she said. “I wanted to contract with a record label and make my own album, and I did. And it was a dream come true. But then I only sold three albums. Then I was dropped from the record label. And on it Time disappeared all my momentum of being this Tony-nominated actress from the hit musical ‘clean’ until ‘wicked’ that things really started looking up again. “

Like the original wicked Witch Elphaba in Broadway’s “Wicked”, Menzel won a Tony and helped make the show a megahit, though it wasn’t always easy to be green. When asked what Elphaba gave her, Menzel replied, “Green ears for the rest of my life!”

Idina Menzel performs “Defying Gravity” from “Wicked” at “The Late Show with David Letterman”:

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

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

“When I was a little girl if I had dreamed that I would be up there and sing a song like this one I wouldn’t have thought it. Or no, I would Have, because I was really very jaw -gay when I was little and I actually believed in myself and thought, “It will definitely happen to me.”

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

I asked, “Is there a small part of you that is like,” let me just see if she can do it this’“

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

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

Her new show offers a different way of turning green: a deepening in a green redwood forest. Even the seats in the newly renovated Netherlands are green. For Menzel it’s almost hard to believe: “It’s just so rare that you can see it come true after so many years, and they literally read things into the Netherlands while we’re talking. That performance isn’t lost on me , and it’s just, I’m so emotional about it.

And now she hopes to defy gravity again. “But I think green and being tall, flying, literally or figuratively, just something I have to respond to or attract in my life, in my characters,” Menzel laughed. “And I am so happy!”

See an extended interview with Idina Menzel:

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History produced by John d’Amelio. Editor: Steven Tyler.