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    An Oakland Dance Troupe Brings Vertical Choreography to Broadway

    In 1990, Amelia Rudolph was hiking through Tuolumne Meadows, a stunning mountain pass in Yosemite National Park, when she had an epiphany on a shiny granite bluff: “Could you make a performance here?” she wondered. “Could you dance on a cliff?”Rudolph, a dancer in the Bay Area who trained with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, had just written a college thesis on dance and ritual and recently become an avid climber. Those experiences converged in her mountaintop revelation — and inspired her to make a dance while dangling from the climbing wall at the gym where she worked.That dance, though unrefined, was enthusiastically received. “I realized I tapped into some part of our human imagination that loves to fly,” Rudolph, 61, said in a phone interview.From that seed grew Project Bandaloop, now just Bandaloop, a vertical dance company that fuses contemporary dance with climbing technique and technology. Using equipment, like harnesses, ropes and belay devices, Bandaloop can take dance’s soaring, ethereal qualities to extremes and bring them to unlikely perpendicular surfaces like the rock face of El Capitan in California or Tianmen Mountain in China.“The spirit of the company,” Rudolph said, celebrates “the power and vulnerability of natural spaces.”Now Bandaloop’s gravity-defying movement and ecological DNA have come to Broadway in the musical “Redwood,” starring Idina Menzel, which opened on Feb. 13.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Review: Idina Menzel Climbs to New Broadway Heights in ‘Redwood’

    The “Wicked” belter scales a 300-foot tree, and a mountain of songs, in a powerful if woo-woo musical about trauma and resilience.The musical “Redwood,” which opened on Thursday at the Nederlander Theater, features two great stars. One is an awe-inspiring force of nature. The other is a tree.The force of nature is Idina Menzel, who sings in 13 of the show’s 17 songs, of which seven are essentially solos. Has anyone ever belted so much, so tirelessly and hair-raisingly?But the size of the role is nothing compared with its emotional complexity and the depth of Menzel’s immersion in it. Her Jesse is a walking panic attack, an avoidant overtalker, an entitled princess and a grief-stricken mother. More astonishing, she is all of these at once, and right from the start. We meet her speeding westward from New York City with a terrible loss in the rearview mirror and no idea where she’s going.We know, though. The musical, by Tina Landau (book, lyrics and direction) and Kate Diaz (music and lyrics), with additional contributions from Menzel herself, is not named “Redwood” idly. Soon Jesse comes upon a grove of the giant trees near Eureka, Calif., and we meet our other star. She — for Jesse not only genders her but also names her Stella — is 14 feet wide and 300 feet tall and centuries if not millenniums old.I am sure redwoods are awesome in real life; I have never seen one. But the tree that Landau and her designers have put onstage is among the most beautiful and wondrous theatrical creations I can recall.Spectacular video by Hana S. Kim renders the tree’s towering swirl of branches on a series of 1,000 immersive LED panels.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Idina Menzel Played Elphaba and Elsa. Now She’s Back on Broadway.

    Menzel, a fan favorite since “Rent,” is back on Broadway in “Redwood,” and this time she’s climbing conifers.Idina Menzel was sitting on a bench in a California redwood grove, yearning for silence. It was late one autumn afternoon, and I had been trying for months to get her to meet me in a forest where we could discuss this musical she’d been working on for 15 years about a woman in a tree, and now here we were. But also, there was a wedding party walking by, and an unleashed dog that knocked over her hibiscus tea, and an aircraft buzzing overhead.Listen to this article with reporter commentaryNo matter. On the drive to the forest from a dance studio where Menzel had been practicing singing upside down, because yes, this musical requires her to dance and sing while scaling a giant tree, she had been thinking about what she wanted to tell me about why she was making a show that is outwardly about redwoods — it’s called “Redwood” — but also about a grieving woman’s search for sanctuary.“I’m a little reticent to say, but I think I have a lot of noise in my own head as a person,” she told me as we settled in at Oakland’s Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park. “The idea of escaping and freeing yourself from your own pain or loneliness or confusion is very healing to me.”In an entertainment industry where actors are lucky to have one career-defining role, Menzel already has three: Maureen, the rabble-rousing performance artist in “Rent”; Elphaba, the green-skinned who-are-you-calling-wicked witch in “Wicked”; and Elsa, the ice-conjuring queen in Disney’s animated “Frozen” films. Those characters have many strengths, but serenity is not one of them.Menzel had her breakout role in “Rent,” top left, and then won a Tony in “Wicked,” top right. Her other stage roles have included the Off Broadway play “Skintight,” bottom right, and the Broadway musical “If/Then,” bottom left.Photographs by Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Wicked’ Alumnae Class Notes: What They Learned at Shiz University

    The graduates of Shiz University are making their alma mater proud.In the 21 years since “Wicked” opened in New York, 43 women have starred full-time as Elphaba or Glinda — frenemies who meet as Shiz undergrads — and many more have taken on the vocally taxing roles in productions across the United States and around the world.Shiz has taught them well. After leaving the show, many have gone on to glittering careers, on Broadway and beyond. Three former Elphabas were nominated for Tony Awards this year, while four former Glindas have appeared in principal roles.As a smash-hit Hollywood adaptation introduces millions more to this revisionist history of Oz, we checked in with alumnae of the stage show to ask what they learned there. These are edited excerpts from our conversations.GlindaKristin ChenowethSara KrulwichChenoweth, who won a Tony Award in 1999 for “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” originated Glinda on Broadway in 2003. She is now one of Broadway’s most-loved stars and is planning to return next season in a musical adaptation of “The Queen of Versailles.”How did you first get involved with “Wicked”?I was called by [the composer] Stephen Schwartz himself, and he said, “Look, I’ve got this part I want you to do.” I didn’t know if I could work out the dates, but I went over to his apartment, and listened to “Popular.” I thought it was really cute and I could have some fun with it, so I was involved in a workshop in L.A., and that’s how it started. I remember the producer Marc Platt going, “Kristin, every once in a while a part comes along — maybe once in a lifetime — that is like a hand to a glove, and this is your part.” Glinda was very much the side character, but they started seeing how Idina and I were working together, and it evolved into a much bigger role. That first night we opened in San Francisco, for our out-of-town tryout, I told Idina, “It’s not going to matter what the critics say. There’s something very special here.” I just knew it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Idina Menzel Will Return to Broadway in ‘Redwood’

    The new musical, about a woman seeking healing, is to arrive early next year.Idina Menzel will return to Broadway early next year in a new musical called “Redwood,” about a grieving woman who seeks healing among ancient trees.Menzel, who has not worked on Broadway for a decade, remains one of the industry’s most-loved stars, forever associated with two iconic roles: Maureen, in the original production of “Rent,” and Elphaba, in the original production of “Wicked” (she won a Tony Award for that one). She then belted her way into the lives of millions of children by voicing Elsa in the “Frozen” films and recording the first film’s monster hit, “Let It Go.”“Redwood” is an original musical that was conceived by Menzel and Tina Landau (“Mother Play,” “SpongeBob SquarePants”), who wrote the musical’s book and is directing the production. The score features music by Kate Diaz and lyrics by Landau and Diaz.The show had an initial production earlier this year at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego. The Broadway production will be produced by Eva Price (“& Juliet”), Caroline Kaplan, a film producer, and Loudmouth Media, a company founded by Menzel, and is being capitalized for up to $16 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.The producers announced Thursday that the show would open on Broadway next year, but during the current theater season, which means they anticipate opening between January and April; Landau is also committed to directing a production of “Floyd Collins” that is scheduled to open on Broadway next April. The producers did not specify which theater “Redwood” will play, and they did not name any other cast members. More

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    ‘You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah’ Review: She’s Growing Up

    Sandler family members (plus Idina Menzel) lean on each other in this Netflix comedy about growing up.The comedy “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah” follows the debut of Stacy Friedman (Sunny Sandler), a preteen who is obsessed with the parties that accompany her Hebrew school cohort’s coming-of-age ceremonies.This joyride to adulthood is a real-life family affair: Sunny stars, and her father, Adam Sandler, amiably rides in the back seat as Stacy’s bewildered dad, Danny. But despite the support Stacy gets from her family (including Idina Menzel as Stacy’s mother, Bree, and Sadie Sandler as her sister, Ronnie), the friendship between Stacy and her best friend, Lydia (Samantha Lorraine), is the film’s emotional core.Stacy and Lydia have planned their parties and their lives around each other, but their friendship is tested by the most challenging trials of middle school: cute boys, cool girls and menstruation. When Stacy walks in on Lydia kissing their mutual crush, she can’t bring herself to consider her friend’s happiness with the mitzvah season’s rabbi-encouraged maturity. Instead, Stacy disinvites Lydia from her bat mitzvah, and she sets out to redefine what her first steps into womanhood should look like now that she intends to take those steps solo.The young cast proves deft with the film’s clever script, by Alison Peck (based on the 2005 novel by Fiona Rosenbloom), and the director Sammi Cohen indulges the virgin-mojito passions of preteens while avoiding nostalgia, thankfully. In one of the film’s best jokes, a partygoer requests a dusty mothball on the dance floor: Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.” For a split second, the movie’s easygoing, contemporary appeal hangs in the balance. And then with delightful rudeness, the film’s middle-aged, disco-ball-helmeted disc jockey, DJ Schmuley (Ido Mosseri), rejects the song, spitting out, “Let Schmuley handle the vibe around here!” A Selena Gomez song fills out the score, and this goofy charmer of a movie bounces on.You Are So Not Invited to My Bat MitzvahRated PG-13 for language and middle-school bathroom humor. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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    ‘Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage?’ Review: Wickedly Talented

    This Disney+ documentary uses a concert set list as a springboard to chronicle Idina Menzel’s musical achievements.Our expanding catalog of glossy celebrity bio-documentaries gains a new entry in “Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage?,” which trails its subject on a national tour in 2018. The concerts saw Menzel performing musical highlights from throughout her career, including a medley of show-tunes, original pop numbers and singalongs.The director, Anne McCabe, uses these songs as springboards into Menzel’s past, and in between lengthy performance sequences — renditions of “Take Me or Leave Me” from “Rent,” “Defying Gravity” from “Wicked” and “Let It Go” from “Frozen” go on and on — the film races through an overview of career achievements. We are frequently reminded that Menzel’s tour ends at Madison Square Garden; in an effort to graft an arc onto this timeline, the documentary insists that playing the arena is Menzel’s lifelong dream.There is little dramatic tension or psychological depth to this cinematic biography, and even in sentimental moments, McCabe fails to elicit an emotional response from her subject or the audience. When, for example, the film touches on the sudden death of the “Rent” creator Jonathan Larson, McCabe includes an impersonal remark from Menzel, cuts to an archival clip of a different cast member and then moves on.Bursts of authenticity occur in scenes concerning Menzel’s preteen son, particularly when Menzel explores how shifting from mom time to work time can bring about both guilt and a measure of relief. We already know that Menzel can belt to the back row; a richer profile would have coaxed out a more intimate voice.Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage?Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. Watch on Disney+. More

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    Review: ‘Wild: A Musical Becoming’ Is Finding Its Footing

    Idina Menzel and a hummable pop score can’t camouflage the fact that this musical is half-baked. Still, it can make for an enjoyable evening, our critic writes.CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — In the 13 years that Diane Paulus has been artistic director of the American Repertory Theater, she has used it as a laboratory for developing new musicals and re-envisioning old ones, then ushering them to Broadway success. “Waitress” and “Jagged Little Pill” had their premieres there; so did Paulus’s staging of “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess” and her revival of “Pippin,” which won her a Tony Award for directing.But at Thursday’s opening night performance of “Wild: A Musical Becoming,” a climate-change eco-fable starring the Tony winner Idina Menzel, Paulus began her preshow speech by ratcheting down the audience’s expectations of this latest premiere.“Musicals take years to develop,” she said. “But the subject matter of this story tonight was so pressing that we felt we could not wait to share it with you.”The actors would perform with scripts in hand, she added. Our imaginations would be required to fill in the blanks of what the A.R.T. is calling a concert production.All of which is fair enough. But the charismatic lead and hummable pop score of “Wild” can’t camouflage the fact that this musical is very much in the awkward phase of becoming whatever it ultimately might be.Still, it can make for an enjoyable evening, depending on your willingness to overlook the ungainly book by V, the playwright formerly known as Eve Ensler, and get over your disappointment in a show that includes Javier Muñoz — a.k.a. Broadway’s sexy Hamilton — but gives him far too little to do, and dresses him dowdily. Actually, you may have to get over the other actors’ costumes, too.Directed by Paulus at the Loeb Drama Center, the story takes place in a town called Outskirtzia. Hard up for cash, the local farmers get an offer from corporate outsiders called the Extractacals: $50,000 apiece in exchange for drilling on their land.The community’s adults are tempted; the teenagers are alarmed. That strife is the primary tension of a show that, for all its ecological advocacy, is also a parable about understanding between parents and children.Menzel plays Bea, a farmer struggling with her mortgage who could use the windfall from the Extractacals. But her adolescent daughter, Sophia (the mononymous musician-actor Yde), is so terrified of the destruction of the planet and outraged by the adults’ complicity in it that she falls into a catatonic state, then disappears into the forest and transforms into a sea horse.It may or may not be a spoiler to say that other children in the town follow suit, each manifesting as a different kind of animal, each determined to save the earth from their parents’ recklessness.With the grown-ups in danger of selling their souls, “Wild” is partly a morality play, gesturing in the direction of Christopher Marlowe’s “Doctor Faustus” — and also toward Brecht, Dr. Seuss and “Urinetown.” All of it in two dimensions.Which is unfortunate, because the cast is packed with talent. Menzel, a disarmingly sympathetic not-so-evil stepmother in Amazon’s recent “Cinderella,” brings an appealing ease and playfulness to Bea, and adds a touch of country music to the richness of her voice (Menzel’s run in the show ends Dec. 23). And Yde opens a window to Sophia’s soul with a couple of striking solos, “Dear Everything” and “Human.”With music principally by the pop songwriters Justin Tranter and Caroline Pennell, and lyrics principally by Tranter, Pennell and V, “Wild” is a slickly produced work in progress. Rock-show lighting by the excellent Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew is remarkably effective in revving up the crowd during the more anthemic numbers.The cast of 10 is backed by a three-piece band (the music director is David Freeman Coleman) and members of the Boston Children’s Chorus, who add vocal depth and, by their presence, enhance the sense of a generation demanding action.But the show comes across as more pageant than musical, with politics paramount. Too often, the text bonks us over the head with its messaging, as when Sophia’s friend Forte (Paravi Das) explains that “all living things are now being seriously jeopardized by us humans — well, non-Indigenous humans, of course.”And does a debate over pronouns really need to erupt — around Possible (the very funny Luke Ferrari), a nonbinary teenager, and their unaccepting father, Mr. Custom (Muñoz) — during the crisis over Sophia’s disappearance? Might there be a more organic moment to make the same point?The only actor who briefly lucks into dialogue that lets whole characters emerge is Josh Lamon, as the excitable Minister Muddle and the ultra-tranquil therapist Dr. Projection.“Your children were traumatized by learning about the consequences of you leasing your lands,” Dr. Projection tells the parents of Outskirtzia. “Then you told them you didn’t care what they thought or felt. You made them feel unimportant and unseen.”Somehow, from Dr. Projection, this lesson doesn’t feel like a lesson — a rare sensation in “Wild.” The show’s creators frequently seem under the impression that virtue excuses lapses in artistry, as when a program note highlights the eco-consciousness of its costume construction.The designers, SiiGii, Roy Caires and Tommy Cole, write that they used “exclusively second hand, recycled and repurposed materials.” Yet the outfits, in nonsensical patchworks of denim and plaid, are unflattering — “Hee Haw” meets the apocalypse — in a way that seems condescending, as if being poor and rural meant having no sense of style.The show’s successful reuse of scenic elements from earlier this season — the set of the A.R.T.’s “Macbeth In Stride” (by Dan Soule), augmented with luxuriantly leafy sculptures (by Daniel Callahan) from its “The Arboretum Experience” — makes a worthier point: that recycled materials don’t need to feel penitential.“Wild” is meeting the world before it’s ready, but there is something ultimately affecting in it about parents and teenagers, and something commendable, too, about theater that tries to respond to the urgent concerns of the day.“We want you to panic, we want you to act,” the children sing, indicting their elders. “You stole our future, and we want it back.” However clumsily, “Wild” is on the side of the kids — an offering of respect and contrition from the grown-ups, while there’s still time.Wild: A Musical BecomingThrough Jan. 2 at the Loeb Drama Center, Cambridge, Mass.; americanrepertorytheater.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More