Redwood has a marquee star at the helm, Idina Menzel, belting out song after song. I don't think the show does her a lot of favors unfortunately. The songs are mostly forgettable, many of them solos, but the best one is not even Menzel's number, but the son's. The sound in the Nederlander theater is dialed up way too loud to be able to understand any of the lyrics. I did kind of like the bare set. There are screens all along the back and sides of the stage, going all the way up to the boxes. The projections have the effect of transporting us to a forest, aided by the only setpiece: a giant tree trunk that rotates to reveal a screen on the opposite side. The stage is quite steep and for most of the show they're rigged up to climb up the tree. Menzel even gets a Defying Gravity-type solo as she ascends.
It's the musical equivalent of Wild, that Reese Witherspoon movie with the walking lady. It's about connecting with nature in the face of personal strife and grief as a means of finding oneself. All to say, it's a little boring. And Menzel's protagonist Jesse can come off as a bit of a Karen. She is not qualified to climb Redwood trees. And she is incessant in insisting people break protocol for her sake. And ultimately she gets her way.
