Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade: Redwood

Not quite our standard "Broadway Parade performance," but it was a Broadway cast performing a song from the show so I think it counts. People have been talking about Redwood for years. Idina Menzel has been a part of it from the very beginning (she's credited as one of the writers) and while that's most of what anybody talks about when they talk about the show, I think it has a lot of potentential even outside of her attachment. It's an original show that isn't based off anything, and it's got a solid creative team, with writer director Tina Landau, music supervisor extraordinare Tom Kitt, and a relative newcomer to Broadway, composer Kate Diaz. I'm cautiously optimistic that this show could be really good, so I was excited to see the performance, even if it's just on a float.

So I'll be honest, I think this song is pretty good. I liked the melody, it had some solid lyrics, Idina gave a great performance, all of that was excellent. My one issue is maybe the orchestration? It sounded very "produced," very "hip hop," which would generally be fine, but it felt like a weird choice for a song about getting into nature to get away from the rush of our increasingly tehnologicial world. I wouldn't be surprised if in the show, the song starts more acoustic and they just kind of cut to the moment where the song built and that made it look more jarring than it needed to, which I guess is fair, but for here it didn't quite work. Nonetheless, I'm still looking forward to the show, and this did make me care more about the bronx zoo float than I ever have in the past, so maybe that's a win?