After nearly a decade, Idina Menzel has returned to Broadway with “Redwood.” This Broadway legend has co-created a starring role perfect for her, belting in 13 of the 17 musical numbers. However, once you look beyond the award-winning voice, the messaging that this show chooses to display begins to seem questionable.
Menzel plays Jesse, a once-successful businesswoman and mother who leaves everything behind, running away to the California redwood forests to escape her grief about her son, Spencer, who accidentally overdosed on fentanyl. Her escape is as much an escape from the present as it is the past — her wife, Mel, wants to openly grieve and talk about their son, but Jesse isn’t able to.
In the show, Jesse comes across a group of researchers scaling a redwood tree and practically begs them to climb the tree and sleep there. She treats nature as a secluded place to avoid the troubles of reality. In “Great Escape,” she sings, “Cause from here, I can see it clearly / It’s nature’s remedy / Far away from the pain / I’ll stay / and I’ll make my great escape.”
This is a key example of “nature writing,” a term ecocritics use to describe the idea of nature as a “sacred” space where people flee to escape the harshness of life. And yet, by creating a harsh divide between the human and natural, we also eliminate the human responsibility to protect nature. Lynn Keller’s book “Recomposing Ecopoetics” describes this thinking as deeply problematic — she writes, “its dualistic vision of humans as separate from nature poses a serious threat to responsible environmentalism because it does not encourage people to live sustainably and respectfully in nature.”
This is apparent in Jesse, who uses the redwood tree as a means to an end. Throughout the show, she sings song after song about the transcendental nature of the trees, but never does Jesse recognize her effects on the environment around her. Where’s the musical number where Jesse acknowledges her role in the anthropocene?
In an era where human activity has been the dominant influence on the climate and environment, there really is no place that is entirely pristine or untouched by humanity. Even the presence of the researchers, Becca and Finn, showcase this. Jesse can describe it as an escape from her life, but there is no place that can escape the grabby hands of humanity.
Finn leads a song called “Big Tree Religion,” which begs the question: if the role of the Redwood tree was replaced with a spiritual deity, would the plot not be the same? The researchers could be replaced by churchgoers showing Jesse the “way of the Lord” as she sleeps in a church basement. This equivalence of nature as a sacred deity is once again eliminating the responsibility of humanity to take action on behalf of nature.
Here are some takeaways from Idina Menzel’s “Redwood.” First, that woman can belt like nobody’s business; but beyond that, there’s a lot of confusion. By the end, Jesse is suddenly able to confront her son’s death, her son “magically appearing” to her in a vision presented by the tree, compelling her to make amends with her wife. The wildfire is used as a means for Finn to suddenly realize he needs to spend time with his family. We are never told as audience members what type of research these two are performing, or any sort of importance the trees hold beyond whatever drives the plot along.
The importance of ecocritical art is to combine the knowledge of our impact with our humanity in order to acknowledge and, well, do something about it. By showcasing such stories, we encourage more and more people to take action in conserving our planet. Unfortunately, “Redwood” has foregone these ideas for the sake of a human-centric plotline and Idina Menzel’s belt.
