To a Californian redwood, human life is but a blip. The tallest trees in the world, reaching over 360ft (110 meters) into the sky, they can live for 2,000 years or more. The ones that still stand on California’s coast have survived wildfires and rapacious logging; they’ve witnessed the forced removal of Indigenous people and the establishment of US land preservation. Their roots are remarkably shallow but vast, forming an underground network of communication.
All these facts and more are folded into Redwood, a new Broadway musical that admirably attempts to capture the grandeur of the silent giants – if you’ve ever seen one, you know they are genuinely spectacular, breathtaking, deserving of all respect – in human-sized theater. It’s easy to wax poetic about trees, less so to sing about them. Nevertheless, Redwood, with music by Kate Diaz, endeavors to connect the trees’ wisdom to our capacity for healing.
