Latest news with #NederlanderTheatre
Chicago Tribune
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
‘Hamilton' will return to Chicago in 2026 following Kennedy Center cancellation
The Broadway musical 'Hamilton' will return to Chicago in 2026, the producer Jeffrey Seller announced Sunday at a Chicago Humanities Festival event. The first national touring company of Lin-Manuel Miranda's smash hit will play the CIBC Theatre (18 W. Monroe St.) from March 4 to April 26, 2026. Group tickets are now available; individual tickets will go on sale later this year, presenter Broadway in Chicago said. Those dates roughly coincide with the previously planned dates for the show to play the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Seller had announced the cancellation of those dates after President Donald Trump announced plans to install himself as Kennedy Center chairman and change the arts center's programming to be more in line with his administration's priorities. Beginning in 2016 and concluding in 2020, 'Hamilton' had a dedicated, 171-week run in Chicago, the first city to present the show after its Broadway opening. The Chicago company played to more than 2.5 million people and grossed more than $400 million at the Chicago box office over three and a half years. It was an economic driver in the Loop, with more than half of its audience coming from more than 100 miles away. Updated 'Hamilton' timeline: From Miranda's 'joke' to Obama's White House to Broadway to Chicago and back A touring production of the musical came back in 2023 for a fall run at the Nederlander Theatre. This new engagement will represent a promised return. Seller was in Chicago for an event at the Francis Parker School to talk about his new memoir, 'Theater Kid.'
Boston Globe
28-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
From broadcast news to Broadway producer
Today, she's a three-time Tony Award winner Then on Feb. 13, Price and her fellow producers opened the brand-new musical 'Redwood,' about a woman who flees to a Northern California redwood forest to embark on a restorative journey. The show, which Broadway producer Eva Price. Courtesy ART artistic director Diane Paulus, who directed 'Jagged Little Pill' and collaborated with Price on its development, praises her as an industry 'mover and a shaker' and a 'tireless and dedicated' producer. 'She gives artists the space and flexibility to spread their wings,' Paulus said. 'But she's also hands-on when you need her, ready to roll her sleeves up and solve problems.' Advertisement That problem-solving skill is vital in Price's role as a producer. On any given show, she's responsible for her productions' financials, raising money from investors, securing theaters, selling tickets, developing marketing plans, press strategy, and awards campaigns, ensuring the whole company's health and safety, and much more. Tucked into a plush green seat inside 'Redwood''s home at the Nederlander Theatre, steps from the stage, Price said that becoming a Broadway producer 'wasn't the dream. I didn't even know what a theater producer did.' She'd acted in theater at Chelmsford High School and was the president of the drama club, but as a student at George Washington University she planned for a career in political communications. After graduation, she worked for Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign, but when Gore lost the election she took the advice of a mentor and moved to New York to break into television news, where her job entailed everything from assigning coverage as the 9/11 attacks unfolded to waking up news anchor Peter Jennings when Pope John Paul II died. 'My 'Sliding Doors' life would have brought me to D.C. to work at the White House,' she said. With 'Redwood' — conceived by Menzel and director Tina Landau, with a score by songwriter Kate Diaz — Price says she was drawn to the story of a female protagonist, fierce yet psychically fraying, escaping the pain and turbulence of her life after suffering a terrible trauma. 'It's inspired by the idea of what it would take to leave everything behind and feel healing and resilience by connecting with nature and being above it all for awhile. It stuck in my soul and in my heart, and it was a story I just had to produce,' she says. Advertisement 'Redwood' marks a kind of homecoming for Menzel. The Nederlander is the theater where the Tony-winning actress made her Broadway debut in 1996 in the groundbreaking musical phenomenon 'Rent.' 'I love full circle moments,' Price said. 'I wanted the show to be in a theater that has meaning.' In an email, Menzel raved about Price's 'fearless producing style' and 'willingness to take risks,' adding, 'She's a badass Jew who doesn't take no for an answer.' The environmentally-themed show features visually stunning projections, with massive LED screens that immerse the audience deep inside the redwood forest and above the treetops. A towering redwood replica stands at the center of the stage, and Menzel and her castmates defy gravity while climbing the tree, and even swinging from it, during the show. Those innovations dovetail with Price's m.o. as a producer known for risk-taking and envelope-pushing ideas. She's always been drawn, she said, to 'the idea of walking into a theater and experiencing the unexpected.' After all, she produced Beth Wohl's nearly wordless play, 'Small Mouth Sounds,' set at a silent retreat, and the unsettling 2019 reimagining of 'Oklahoma!' that channeled America's fear of outsiders with an immersive, in-the-round staging, blood-soaked finale, and ominous live-video sequence. When Price first decided to take a shot at producing, she was in her mid-20s and had come out of the closet only a few years before, so she was fearless — and a little naive about what the job would entail, which probably helped. 'I was not scared of anything. If I knew then what I know now, no way would I have done this. I didn't know how hard, how impossible, how heartbreaking it can be,' Price says. Advertisement She got her feet wet producing a small-scale show called 'Joy' with some friends for a short run in 2005 in the West Village. Then she partnered with some producers to take off-Broadway's 'The Great American Trailer Park Musical' on tour. 'We produced it in-house, taught ourselves how to be general managers. I didn't really know how to do any of that,' she says. She learned 'by doing — and by failing.' As a producer, 'You're part psychologist, part coach, part rabbi or priest, part parent, and part boss. And you wear all those hats, from support system to tough love to problem solver,' Price says. One of her early high-profile successes was Carrie Fisher's one-woman comic memoir show 'Wishful Drinking,' which had a pre-Broadway tour that came to Boston in 2008 before landing on Broadway in 2009-10. 'That got my taste buds going for how to do this,' she says. She continued to cut her teeth as a co-producer on Broadway shows like 'The Addams Family,' 'On Your Feet!' 'Dear Evan Hansen,' and 'Angels in America.' She was part of the lead producing teams for '& Juliet' and 'Peter and the Starcatcher' on Broadway, off-Broadway shows like 'Cruel Intentions' and smaller-scale tours like Two of her productions came to Boston last fall — Joey Soloway's Emmy-winning television series and Advertisement Price credits her success to her ability to compartmentalize, and her passion. 'I think a theater producer has to lead with their passion because it's such an emotional and visceral art form.' How does she decide what shows she wants to produce? 'It's a trifecta of head, heart, and gut, but it's pretty gut-related,' she explains. 'When a show connects with people, makes [them] think and feel a certain way, it is the most fulfilling art form on the planet.' For Price, when your job doesn't feel like work, 'that's when it's the most meaningful. And so often the work we do in the theater doesn't feel like work. It feels like joy, it feels like heart, it feels like truth, it feels like life. So to work in an art form that hits all those points is incredibly gratifying.'
USA Today
14-02-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
'Redwood' review: Idina Menzel goes out on a limb in hollow new Broadway musical
NEW YORK – There's a beautiful show somewhere in "Redwood," a sort of "Eat, Belay, Love" about a grief-stricken mother (Idina Menzel) who finds solace in climbing trees. But despite Menzel's very best efforts, the musical's lofty ambitions never quite take root. "Redwood," which opened Feb. 13 at the Nederlander Theatre, is a long-gestating passion project for Menzel, who last graced Broadway a decade ago in another original work, "If/Then." The show is loosely inspired by a woman named Julia Butterfly Hill, who in the 1990s, spent more than two years living in a 1,000-year-old tree to save it from being chopped down. "Redwood" takes the seed of Hill's story and turns it into something far more contrived, and frankly, uninteresting. The show begins with Jesse (Menzel), overcome with losing her wayward son, Spencer (Zachary Noah Piser), as she hops in the car and drives from New York to California, where she stumbles on a redwood forest. Enamored by the trees' majesty and mysticism, she quickly ingratiates herself with scientists Finn (Michael Park) and Becca (Khaila Wilcoxon), who begrudgingly show her the ropes of scaling the mighty conifer. Tina Landau, the show's director and book writer, spends ample time establishing what the climb would mean to Jesse, who has buried herself in work and shut out her wife, Mel (De'Adre Aziza), in order to avoid discussing Spencer. But when Jesse finally ascends to the treetops midway through the nearly two-hour musical, the story seemingly has no where else to go. Instead, composer Kate Diaz pads out the proceedings with a repetitive score of new-age anthems about clarity, peace, healing, and rising from the ashes. Menzel, of course, is known for her formidable pipes and piercing belt, which she's showcased throughout her career as the original Maureen in "Rent," Elphaba in "Wicked" and Elsa in Disney's "Frozen" franchise. Diaz attempts to play to her prodigious talents by giving the Tony winner a relentless string of park-and-bark ballads that she delivers from the redwood canopies. But as we've witnessed in recent Broadway outings "Lempicka" and "& Juliet," there's no glory in trying to blow out your leading lady's voice, and Menzel often struggles to keep up with the onslaught of "Let It Go" rehash she's been saddled with. Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle. It's too bad, because when "Redwood" has the good sense to take its own advice and just sit in the silence, Menzel is fantastic. The actress endearingly conveys Jesse's gung-ho attitude and naivete as she tries to rough it in the great outdoors, forging an unlikely friendship with the no-nonsense Becca. And in later scenes, as Jesse finally confronts Spencer's death, her ineffable pain is etched across Menzel's achingly expressive face. It's a deeply present performance that makes you wonder what the "Enchanted" star could achieve were she not beholden to throat-busting vocal theatrics. Menzel is buttressed by a game supporting cast, with a star-making turn from the extraordinary Wilcoxon, and an affecting 11 o'clock number from the golden-voiced Piser. Melecio Estrella's aerial choreography is impressive, if underutilized, while Jason Ardizzone-West's wrap-around scenic design relies too heavily on Epcot-ready projections of verdant woodlands. "Redwood" certainly means well, and with the renewed bout of "Wicked" hysteria, audiences will likely flock to see Menzel's much-ballyhooed return to her theatrical roots. But for a musical that should soar, it most often feels dreadfully earthbound. "Redwood" is now playing at the Nederlander Theatre (208 W. 41st St) in New York.
Chicago Tribune
14-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: ‘Redwood' on Broadway holds few surprises as Idina Menzel communes with the trees
NEW YORK — Stephen Sondheim famously said that Broadway is about surprise. You pays your money and, ideally, you are amazed, or at least intermittently jolted, by what you find there. But there's little ideal about 'Redwood,' a wholly unsurprising new tree-hugging musical (and I mean that literally) written and directed by Steppenwolf Theatre ensemble member Tina Landau, with songs composed by Kate Diaz and with a starring role and a formidable vocal challenge for Idina Menzel. The Broadway star plays a middle-aged lesbian from Long Island who suffers the loss of her son (while still in his early 20s) and, grieving, finds her way to a redwood forest in Northern California, where she seeks healing among the giant, majestic trees, one of which occupies much of the footprint of the Nederlander Theatre as characters rappel all the way up into the flies, up and down its bark. Menzel's character, Jesse, has a partner, Mel (De'Adre Aziza) but she's underwritten and mostly confined to phone calls asking when Jesse is coming home. The dead son, played by Zachary Noah Piser, makes appearances too, recalling the show 'Next to Normal' as he talks to his broken-hearted mom. But for most of the show, Jesse interacts with two tree-loving naturalists whom she finds working in the forest. One, Finn (Michael Park), is a gentle, fatherly type who helps his visitor (and thus the audience) learn about redwood trees. The other, Becca (Khaila Wilcoxon) is more abrasive and her role in the show is mostly to complain about Finn's caring for this grieving soul when he should be getting on with his work with the trees. This she does over and over again, as if we are all back in the musical 'If/Then,' which also happened to star Menzel. The systemic problem with this new show is that the moment Jesse first hugs the tree, which she calls Stella, you think to yourself, huh, she's going to find healing in the beauty and longevity of that majestic tree and that is precisely what happens pretty much in the way you knew it was going to happen from the moment she enters the forest. You know this Becca will soften. You know wise Finn will reach his learning goals for his needy student. You know Jesse will find a way to go home, a little more able to face the future. I've no wish here to cast shade upon what the Japanese call Shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing, wherein one finds therapeutic balm by walking among trees and seeking to commune with a calming natural environment. I've sought that out myself. I'm team tree in all kinds of ways and exploring our connection to our current gasping environment, especially out west, is a perfectly valid idea for a musical. Aptly, this one originated at the La Jolla Playhouse in California. Most great musicals are about death in some way and 'Redwood' strives to comfort us with the timeless idea that humans who leave us don't cease to exist but merely metamorphize into a different form that will always remain with us. If we didn't have that basic plot, we wouldn't have Broadway; heck, we would not have pretty much our entire canon of drama. That's all fair enough, but, wow, is this clunky show on the nose with all that stuff. The visual aspects of 'Redwood,' which has a tech-heavy, video-and-tree design from Jason Ardizzone-West, is both cool in the colloquial sense and overly cool to the touch, at times overly IMAX-y of gestalt. The tree-climbing mechanism used in the show has a certain level of brio, especially as everyone shimmies away from the tree on their ropes, allowing Menzel's fans to relive 'Defying Gravity,' a comparison from 'Wicked' that the show leans into without apparent worry. 'Frozen,' too. There's even a line about a Disney princess. For my money, this self-aware stuff pulls you out of the show although it might be a recognition that the show's prospects lie almost entirely with existing Menzel fans. She was in fine voice on the night I saw the show and gamely clambers her way through more than a dozen musical numbers, a bigger assignment than is typical in Broadway musicals and an achievement in and of itself. Many of the numbers in a score mostly dedicated to the search for healing are pleasing to the ear; 'A Dream' and 'Roots' both take admirable flight. Menzel's musical fanbase will find songs to enjoy. And Menzel will have new material for her concerts. But 'Redwood' keeps repeating itself and thus running away from its own potential as a rare enviro-musical, which is surprising given Landau's formidable capabilities as a theater artist. Here, she gets trapped in some early ideas that don't work as she tries to dramatize and physicalize what it means to grieve, or be around someone going through that pain. I suspect she wanted to emphasize fragility and uncertainty to draw as firm a contrast as possible with the timeless stature of the show's anchoring tree but we go in and out of the forest while 'Redwood' struggles to climb above its own constraining canopy.
CBS News
26-01-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
Idina Menzel returns to Broadway in "Redwood"
Last fall, when superstar Idina Menzel wasn't in New York, she hung out in Oakland, Calif. At Bandaloop Studios, she was learning to dance suspended at the end of a rope … and this from a woman who says she isn't much of a dancer on the ground. "I don't know what I'm doing!" she exclaimed. But when you see exactly why she was doing this, it suddenly all makes sense. In the new Broadway musical "Redwood," the audience is transported to the heart of the redwood forest, and seemingly into the trees themselves. It's loosely inspired by a woman named Julia Butterfly Hill, who, in the late '90s, spent more than two years living in a thousand-year-old redwood to save it from being cut down. Her effort worked: the tree was saved. And now, Menzel and writer-director Tina Landau are taking their own leap of faith with an idea they've been kicking around for more than a decade. Asked if she was ever worried that their experiment would fail, Landau said, "Yes, I'm still worried. I didn't know. But it was one of those passion projects for both myself and Idina where it was just like, let's just trust that what is meant to happen will happen." "Redwood" is about a workaholic mom who runs away from it all, and finds herself in the redwood forest where her life is changed forever. One of the themes of the show is based on the fact that 300-foot redwoods actually support each other. Landau said, "Their roots only go five or six feet into the ground. Their roots go sideways instead of down, until they reach the roots of other trees, and they intertwine with those. So, all the trees end up holding each other up." To listen to Idina Menzel perform "Great Escape," from the musical "Redwood," click on the video player below: The musical, which is currently in previews, is all-new, but Menzel is on familiar ground. She's performing at the Nederlander Theatre, which is the same theatre where she opened in "Rent" in 1996. "Yeah, it's like a homecoming for me. It's full circle. It's very emotional for me. When I did 'Rent," that was the first professional job I ever had – and it was a Broadway show. So, I was super-lucky. That was a beautiful time in my life." It was beautiful. She was 25 years old, and her performance in "Rent" put her squarely on the map, with a Tony Award nomination. "I got a record deal that I always wanted to get," she said. "I wanted to be signed to a record label so badly and make my own album, and I did. And that was a dream come true. But then I only sold, like, three albums. So, then I got dropped from the label. And then by that time, my whole kind of momentum of being this Tony-nominated actress from the hit musical 'Rent,' it sort of dissipated. And then I had to kind of keep pounding the pavement again. It wasn't until 'Wicked' that things started to really look up again." As the original Wicked Witch Elphaba in Broadway's "Wicked," Menzel won a Tony, and helped turn the show into a mega-hit, though it wasn't always easy being green. Asked what Elphaba gave her, Menzel replied, "Green ears for the rest of my life!" Idina Menzel performs "Defying Gravity" from "Wicked" on "The Late Show With David Letterman": And then, she was an animated princess in Disney's "Frozen," singing the song that millions of would-be princesses couldn't get out of their heads. "My relationship with 'Let It Go' is fabulous," she said. "It's one of the best things that's ever happened to me. People always say, 'Do you get sick of a song like that?' And maybe they think I'm lying to you, but I really don't." Idina Menzel, as Elsa, performs "Let It Go" in "Frozen": "When I was a little girl, if I would have dreamt that I'd be up there singing a song like this, I wouldn't have believed it. Or, no, I would have, 'cause I really was very cocky when I was little, and I actually, you know, believed in myself and thought, 'Definitely, it's definitely gonna happen for me.'" But the task of writing Menzel's next big song went to someone who'd never written for a big Broadway star (or for anyone). "Redwood" is composer Kate Diaz's very first show, but you'd never know it. Asked what it's like to write for The Idina Menzel, Diaz said, "It's amazing. I had never written for anybody else before, so great place to start, for sure! What an incredible voice to write for." I asked, "Is there a little part of you that's like, 'Let me just see if she can do this'?" "I mean, she usually can," Diaz replied, "So, not really." And she can do it on demand, as she demonstrated in the new "Wicked" film where she brought back her classic vocal riff. Her new show offers a different way to go green: an immersion in a leafy redwood forest. Even the seats in the newly-remodeled Nederlander are green. For Menzel it's almost hard to believe: "It's just so rare that you get to see it come to fruition after so many years, and they're literally loading things into the Nederlander as we speak. That accomplishment isn't lost on me, and it's just, I'm so emotional about it. And now she's hoping to defy gravity, again. "But I think green and being high, flying, literally or figuratively, is just something that I must respond to or attract in my life, in my characters," Menzel laughed. "And I'm kind of happy with that!" For more info: Story produced by John D'Amelio. Editor: Steven Tyler.
