BROADWAY FOR KIDS

Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt’s Pulitzer-Prize winning musical, Next to Normal, (which I described as “nothing short of brilliant” in previous essays) is now available to stream from PBS Passport.  This is a video recording of the London 2023 Donmar Warehouse production and is the sixth time I have been fortunate enough to engage with it.   Not to beat around the bush, this is (by a slim margin) the best production of this musical I have seen (so far).   The intimacy of the video production adds layers of subtext usually invisible in a large auditorium, the conceptual design and staging is unique and compelling, and the performances go straight to the heart of this gut-wrenching play.

 

Welcome to the Goodman household.  Mother Diana dithers joyfully around during the wee hours as son Gabe comes in late and daughter Natalie wallows in insomnia.  Dad (Dan) wakes up and the family quickly enjoys the anticipation of “Just Another Day.”  But a tension thick enough to butter gradually infuses the playfulness -- something is amiss.  Very amiss.  Diana suffers from schizophrenia, and everyone else struggles to cope.  Since her condition involves delusions and hallucinations, not all is as it seems.  As the play continues, Diana is subjected to one failed therapy after another, as her family struggles (in vain) to hold together with a modicum of normalcy.  Or, at best, next-to-normalcy.

This is a brilliantly realized portrait of mental illness and the effect it has on families and hearts.  It will make you reach for the tissue box.  And it (accurately) reminds us that there are no “easy” answers that can tie up the story in a neat, crowd-pleasing bow.  There is just a vivid reminder that the “price of love,” of family, is pain, is grief, is loss.   Even if this household tears itself apart (and the spoiler police insist on me saying “Not that I’m saying it does”), there is hope for the characters themselves, that they have a future brighter than the shades of purple we’ve been witnessing,

 

Almost completely sung-through, this show boasts a score that seems to grow in quality as time passes (it has been over twelve years since I first heard it).  From the opening “Just Another Day” through the satiric “My Psychopharmacologist and I,” through the wistfully metaphoric “I Miss the Mountains,” through the heart-wrenching “Superboy and the Invisible Girl,” every song is a gem, every song uncovers layers of emotion and heartbreak and ecstasy.  My favorites seem to change with every viewing, but here they remain  “You Don’t Know”/”I am the One,” an anger-fest in which Diana and Dan clearly outline the love/hate boundaries of their marriage that struggles to survive (as daughter Natalie cowers on the steps clutching her ears in a vain attempt to not overhear).  Even better is Gabe’s ecstatic anthem “I’m Alive,” in which nothing NOTHING will stop his every-breath-is-a-wonder appreciation of life.  Tom Kitt (music) and Brian Yorkey (lyrics) have created a score that gets better every time I hear it, and I’ve heard it more often than many more recent shows.

 

Leading this cast is a transcendent Caissie Levy (Elsa in Broadway’s Frozen) as Diana.  She brings so much happiness and vitality to the opening number that it’s a true shock when her joy becomes just another manic episode.  Throughout, she immerses herself completely into Diana’s sorrows and grief and joys, showing surprisingly unexpected flashes of wit and lucidity.  She works her way (some would say insidiously) into our hearts and souls.

 

As daughter Natalie, Eleanor Worthington-Cox (London’s Matilda) is absolutely remarkable.  Her young face a study in open vulnerability, she embraces Natalie’s dark side with a vengeance that is more shield than rebellion. And, not to comment on appearances, but she looks as if she were Ms. Levy’s daughter. As son Gabe, Jack Wolfe brings a gleeful playfulness that bolsters his obvious love for his family.  Father Dan is skillfully embodied by Jamie Parker (Harry Potter in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in both London and New York) who is not afraid to make the character’s bad choices almost justified.  Jack Ofrecio is Natalie’s friend Henry and Trevor Dion Nicholas brings dimension to Diana’s two doctors.  In fact, this entire cast gels beautifully and creates a memorable ensemble, as evidenced in the “behind the scenes” documentary on the PBS Passport streaming service (where you can also see Ms. Levy belt out “Let it Go” from Frozen).

 

I also have to commend director Michael Langhurst here for staging the show with nuance and style and giving us visual motifs that truly enhance the story (Gabe’s final embrace of Dan seeming almost a chokehold, Gabe the only family member alert enough to prevent Diana from falling off the kitchen island in “Catch Me I’m Falling,”  that kitchen island anchoring and centering the set even as it rotates to underscore Diana’s loss of control.  He also brings an enhanced physicality to the staging, having characters standing on the kitchen island, having Diana spin dizzily on an office chair as a carousel of medications are discussed, even having her wield a kitchen stool at both Dan and Gabe in anger.

 

Mr. Langhurst is ably supported by a set design that uses translucent screens to make characters lose focus or musicians gain focus, a staircase that provides escape and levels and movement.  The lighting design is also an asset – characters isolated at key moments, Diana’s hallucinations exploding with color and angle,

 

This show was taped on both an empty stage and with a full audience, so the camera is able to “get in the faces” of the cast without letting us forget we’re watching a live show – forehead mics are always visible even when the audience is not.  And that makes all the difference.  The cast is able to facially telegraph depths lost to proscenium audiences, suggesting that this show is improved as venue size decreases.  Not that there was ever anything really wrong with productions in larger venues.  It’s a really-good/even-better comparison.

 

Schizophrenia (and mental illness in general) seems an unlikely subject for a musical.  But, when all is said and done, what better way to show a mind at war with itself, a complex web of emotion that binds and constricts even it as it frees and complicates?  No, this is a show that is fully deserving of its already considerable roster of honors, a show that moves an audience more profoundly than most “high-mindedly” serious musicals.  It is a show that tackles a subject in the way that theatre does best – by creating characters we care about and who have stories that mingle and conflict and divide, and then by framing it all in a musical whose songs persist in memory, even as time inexorably fades into the past.  Even as time insistently clings to the present.

 

This shows also makes me wonder if  tragedy could have triggered a Bipolar episode in me?  In my wife or daughter?  It seems likely.  Maybe even probable.

 

Next to Normal is a show that shows us the true price of love – to experience love is to experience grief and anger and frustration and patience and the whole d^&n array of obsessions that define us as human.  I can’t ask for any more from a show, and I have seen too few that deliver at the level of this production.

 

Day after the day, Next to Normal will linger in my memory.

    --  Brad Rudy  (BKRudy@aol.com    #PBSGreatPerformances     #NextToNormal)

 

As a preview, future productions in this season of Great Performances include Yellow Face by David Henry Hwang, the Dylan “Jukebox” musical The Girl From the North Country, and the recent London revival of Cole Porter’s  Kiss Me, Kate.  I hope to be able to bring you commentary on this as they become available.

 

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/next-to-normal-about/16693