Review: Idina Menzel’s World Premiere of “Redwood”

by Cassiopeia Guthrie, February 26, 2024

Can you ever outrun grief?

La Jolla Playhouse’s newest world premiere musical, Redwood, follows Jesse, a self-proclaimed perfectionist who fills her days and nights with work in the wake of the loss of her son, Spencer. It quickly becomes clear that she and her wife, Mel, have very different means of coping: where Mel needs to process the grief, Jesse veers away from it—and, eventually, into the driver’s seat of a car, fleeing across the country. 

She ultimately lands in the redwood forest of Eureka, California. It is only there, under a canopy of stars and branches which stretch to the sky, that Jesse is finally able to breathe. 

Read the review at San Diego Magazine.