The Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts
presents
NEXT TO NORMAL
AN ORIGINAL MUSICAL
March 29 - April 3, 2011
Book and Lyrics by Brian Yorkey
Music by Tom Kitt
Musical Staging by Sergio Trujillo
Directed by Michael Greif
Electrifying. Complex. Stunning.
NEXT TO NORMAL
Nominated for eleven 2009 Tony Awards in 2009 and won three:
Best Original Score
Best Orchestration
Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical
for Alice Ripley In 2010
Pulitzer Prize for Drama
.
“Next to Normal” is cut from the same cloth as many of the world’s great operas: a loving family copes with the repercussions of a member’s incurable mental illness while struggling not to be sucked into its insidious crazy-making.
Everything about this production is first rate – direction, cast, their acting and singing voices, the multiple designs (set, costume, lighting, sound), musical direction, orchestrations, vocal arrangements.
Bipolar Disorder is the uncredited cast member with the ability to turn a family on its head. Playing Diana, the wife and mother, is Alice Ripley who created the role on Broadway (733 performances) and won a Tony (2009) for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical. She gives a deft performance showing a range of emotions that govern the bipolar symptoms she contends with when the medications stop working and/or she stops taking them. One example of her bizarre behavior is creating a production line of sandwich-making on the floor. Her dedicated husband Dan (Asa Somers) recognizes the symptoms of medication failure and declares it’s “only a blip,” choosing to minimize the alarm he feels. They visit her doctor who rattles off a cornucopia of medications used to treat bipolar that elicits a wry comment from Diana: such pharmaceutical treatment is “not exactly an exact science” she deadpans. Indeed, this hit or miss protocol raises ethical concerns and receives damning parody in a musical phrase borrowed from “The Sound of Music”: “These pills are a few of my favorite things.” Tra la.
When a new doctor (both Drs. Madden and Fine are played with professional patina by Jeremy Kushnier) prescribes shock therapy for Diana, Natalie, her teen daughter (Emma Hunton) terrified for her mother’s life, experiments with prescription drugs available on the street and almost loses a loving boyfriend, Henry (Preston Sadleir). The sixth cast member (Gabe, played by Curt Hansen) is a product of Diana’s hallucinations.
The family home resembles the backside of a life-size dollhouse constructed with an Erector Set. As seen from Row U, the main supports have a metallic sheen. When lights that trace the construction bones are switched on and off, lights of myriad bold colors, flashing, throbbing, are in sync with the characters’ helter-skelter emotions. The see-through rooms reflect how enmeshed the family is, how mutually dependent and stressed they are by Diana’s illness. She, of course, is hurting, confused, and ultimately defiant.
Running in tandem is a rich musical score; its lyrics are seamless extensions of the script. As sung by the cast, they are, for the most part, easy to understand but disturbing. Contrary to custom, the song titles are not listed in the program.
The “feel good” aspect of this rock musical drama is the attention it brings to the need of researching reliable treatment programs. In the meantime, millions suffer with unconnected synapses that prevent them from experiencing a range of normal feelings that do not turn friends and families into second-guessing, tippy toeing walkers on eggs.
PROGRAM NOTE: IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW IS LIVING WITH MENTAL ILLNESS, YOU ARE NOT ALONE. CONTACT THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE OF MENTAL ILLNESS (WWW.NAMI.ORG)
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