Redwood

With the same preternatural gusto she brought to "Wicked" and "If/Then," Idina Menzel is back on Broadway in "Redwood" to, once again, confront musicalized trauma, this time as Jesse, a middle-aged art gallery owner from New York who, after her twentysomething son Spencer (Zachary Noah Piser) dies of a drug overdose, manically speeds across the country to climb an exceptionally tall tree. Coinciding with the show's deterministic title, that's where grief pulls Jesse: to a California redwood to grapple high above the ground with soul-crushing sorrow while having nothing to hold onto except for the healing virtue of a trite metaphor. Though it's, of course, easy to sympathize with Jesse's brutal ordeal, unfortunately the creative team responsible for Redwood never takes Jesse as seriously as her suffering, instead relying on Menzel's soaring vocals to defy gravity despite the burden of a leaden score and book. [more]