The photo shows my guitar with, at far left, Tony Award-winning Broadway superstar Idina Menzel — Maureen from the original cast of Rent, and the voice of Elsa in Frozen. Menzel and Taylor are appearing together until the end of the month at the La Jolla Playhouse in Redwood, Menzel’s lovely new musical about grief and survival. Kathy and I saw it Friday night.
But sorry for making this all about me. Our son-in-law, brilliant guitarist and bassist PJ Bovee, is a member of the six-member orchestra for Redwood’s world premiere. I lent him that sweet Taylor acoustic electric lo! these many years ago, and they keep turning up together in the coolest places. At PJ’s right, I believe, is conductor and keyboardist Haley Bennett, whose small ensemble amply buoyed the five-person cast’s magnificent voices.
You probably know Menzel’s powerful mezzo from Frozen’s “Let It Go.” It bears you from the depths to the treetops in Redwood, which she conceived with lyricist and director Tina Landau. Menzel’s character, Jesse, a mother enduring impossible grief, impulsively flees her home in New York to drive across country to redwood country, where either redemption or oblivion awaits. Her loss has cut her off from those who could help her heal, especially her wife, Mel (De’Andre Aziza). They have an achingly beautiful duet by phone, “Back Then,” their twinned voices revealing the saving power of the connection Jesse denies.
New friends and experiences give her hope. Redwood #237 (I need to look it up) is the world’s biggest metaphor. Jesse climbs it, hugs it, briefly considers leaping from the top of it, and at one point stands against it in a cruciform position. Alive since before the birth of the baby in Bethlehem, we’re told, it models for us by surviving. We learn that the hardest, most durable wood at its core is no longer part of the mighty tree’s nutritional system. And yet it persists. “The dead are the heart of the living,” Jesse finally proclaims, as her holy week melts into Easter.