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All Bark, No Bite: Redwood
Idina Menzel grieves in a tree and leaves.
High up on a platform in the overstory, where the researchers — against the better judgment of the less romantic of the pair — eventually allow her to live for several days, she communes with nature (the tree, she asserts, tells her its name is Stella), briefly considers suicide, and faces fires both spiritual and conveniently literal. Melecio Estrella and his aerial-dance company, Bandaloop, are credited with Redwood ’s aerial choreography and “vertical movement,” and Jesse, Becca, and Finn all spend a good deal of the story buckling into harnesses, pulling on carabiners, and hoisting themselves toward the flies. Jesse’s son (Zachary Noah Piser), who appears to her in memories and visions throughout the play, may eventually offer her absolution, but for true catharsis, we need to have felt something, have risked something, and for all its soaring vocals and vertical movement, Redwood leaves us stubbornly grounded.
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