STAGE WEST: "Redwood" at La Jolla Playhouse

Zachary Noah Piser and Idina Menzel in "Redwood."                                             Photo by Rich Soublet II

            Idina Menzel is defying gravity again, this time in a world-premiere musical, “Redwood,” at La Jolla Playhouse.
            The Broadway star who once upon a time propelled “Wicked” into the cultural consciousness doesn’t fly in Tina Landau and Katie Diaz’s “Redwood” – she climbs high into the majestic giants of the Northern California forest. It’s an existential quest for a woman, Jesse Myers (Menzel), who is all but incapacitated by grief and is desperate not only for answers but for a reason to live.
            This is a personal creative project for Menzel, who conceived “Redwood” with Landau, and with that prodigious voice of hers she sings her heart out. The power-ballad- and affirmation-heavy score is just made for a Broadway audience, though “Redwood’s” is a story that inhabits dark places in the soul.
            A broken protagonist setting out on the road to an unknown destination, as Jesse does in “Redwood,” is not exactly a novel premise. A premise for a lot of novels (and films), true. But we’ve seen a setup like this before. We do learn early on that Jesse has lost a grown son and a year later she remains devastated. (The circumstances of Spence’s death come much later.) In spite of her wife Mel’s (De’Adre Aziza) plea to face life and be strong, to honor his memory rather than to seek to escape from it, Jesse flees.
            The cross-country drive west (“Place”) is our first opportunity to experience the stunning special effects of this production. The projections by media designer Hana S. Kim capture America on the fly. In time they will make the California redwoods come alive in a way that takes your breath away, as will the scenic design by Jason Ardizzone-West.
            There are clues along Jesse’s drive to forthcoming revelations about her past – strangers who come and go. When she gets to the end of her journey – the redwoods near Eureka, Calif., she meets Finn (Michael Park) and Becca (Nkeki Obi-Melekwe), who climb the mighty trees, study them and all but worship them. Soon Jesse’s deepest exploration of self will become real – and it will test all her bravery, resolve and intestinal fortitude.
            The Finn character, folksy and philosophical and the initiator of the over-the-top “A Little Bit Wild” number, feels like an amalgam of “colorful free spirits” from a dozen other shows. Becca, on the other hand, a serious scientist who is not at all receptive to Jesse’s wanting to climb the redwoods herself (or even hang around her and Finn), is genuinely tough, smart and credible. Obi-Melekwe not only brings this out deftly but exhibits some impressive vocal power of her own (“Becca’s Song” in particular).
            Finn, it is revealed, is sympathetic to Jesse’s plight. He has not lost a son as she has, but the relationship he has with his own is strained, distant – and it’s his fault. So he accedes (still rather unbelievably) to Jesse’s ultimate request: to spend a night high in the redwoods by herself. The more practical Becca is dead-set against it.
            Let me interrupt here to laud the vertical movement and staging by Melecio Estrella and his BANDALOOP company. The climbs Jesse, Finn and Becca make, at least to an amateur like me, look all too believable, aided by the projections that give the impression that the three are going higher and higher and higher.
            But it’s when Jesse gets her way and is alone in the redwoods heights that the show is at its most pointed and its most poignant. Her initial freakout (Menzel does this so well and so humanly) is temporary. Jesse finds solace and the pathway to peace up in the trees. (She bonds and names the tree in whose branches she resides “Stella.”) It’s there that she confides in Becca, who has softened toward her by this point, the details of her son’s death and the extent of her searing pain over it: This is “Redwood’s” you-can-hear-a-pin-drop moment.
            The payoff song (“Still”) is rendered not by Menzel at all but by Zachary Noah Piser, appearing as Jesse’s son. Like the star playing his mom, he knows how to belt out a ballad.
            There’s no question that “Redwood” is a visual spectacle or that its illusion of scaling the towering trees is captivating. For me, the music and lyrics are fine, nothing more, though the musicians behind the scenes conducted by Michael Pearce sublimely heighten the emotional atmosphere of the show.
            Metaphors are rife and obvious in this script. That being said, the overarching comment about connections is one that can never be made too often or too loudly. Even among the redwoods and the patches of blue sky above them, we are all one when you get right down to it.
            “Redwood” runs through March 31 at La Jolla Playhouse’s Hughes and Sheila Potiker Theatre.