Summary
A woman leaves her life behind to find healing and strength in the redwood forests of Northern California.
Tuesday, February 18, 2025 at 7:00 PM Feb 18, 2025, 7:00 PM
Hard one to rate! I had really mixed feelings.
The lead character, Jesse, is given a lot of texture—intersecting identities, backgrounds, opinions—and Idina realizes it all fairly believably, relatably, as the character suffers a great tragedy and struggles with a prolonged grieving process.
That Jesse is so richly-layered, ironically, takes some of the wind out of the story. It’s just too tidy. It’s hard to buy that, all of a sudden, this complex person would come to the realization that she could simply decide to go on living. Like the thought had never occurred to her? Like nobody had ever suggested it?
I’m not opposed to a happy ending; I just felt like the table was (pretty painstakingly) set for a more naturalistic one. In real life, we call this kind of thing “complicated grief” for a reason. You fight it to a tenuous ceasefire over time, and it comes and goes, but you hang on by immersing yourself in things you love and the support of the people in your life.
Redwood brushes greatness when it starts to play with this theme—Jesse finds both real and metaphorical community in the forest, and the shallow roots of the trees intertwine so that they’re sturdy enough to reach for the sky over many years. It’s very nearly satisfying. But the idea is mostly discarded by the end in favor of one great (literal! ⚡️) bolt from the blue.
That being said, the rest of the show is more good than bad. There might be one or two songs too many, but they’re pretty consistently good. Idina and Khaila both have some jaw-dropping moments. The rappelling choreography is amazing.
The tree is nice and tactile, but the screens are used to inconsistent effect. They create some really gorgeous abstract visual moments, but they’re less successful at establishing a sense of concrete place when the “camera angle” of the backdrop swirls and tilts unnaturally.
There were problems with the sound mix. High frequencies were brought down so far that all of the actors seemed to have lisps for the first 30 minutes, but I think they made some adjustments after that. The orchestra sounded so tinny that I literally thought they weren’t playing the music live.
This is too many words and I’ll probably clean it up in the morning. I have too many thoughts. I basically liked it! But I understand why people are panning it. I just think it’s a couple tweaks away from being a really great show.