Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: "There’s no doubt that Next to Normal” is a production of the highest caliber. The musical that’s playing through Sunday at the Benedum Center is as a presentation of the PNC Broadway Across America. The Pittsburgh series features a cast of six that consistently delivers stellar, complex performances. Throughout the show’s two-hours and 15 minutes running time they mine the emotions, objectives and consequences of their troubled characters with sensitivity and understanding.
Saturday, April 09, 2011
'Next to Normal' features stellar, complex performances
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: "There’s no doubt that Next to Normal” is a production of the highest caliber. The musical that’s playing through Sunday at the Benedum Center is as a presentation of the PNC Broadway Across America. The Pittsburgh series features a cast of six that consistently delivers stellar, complex performances. Throughout the show’s two-hours and 15 minutes running time they mine the emotions, objectives and consequences of their troubled characters with sensitivity and understanding.
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This was a stellar performance, and it was not easy to watch. I did not have the chance to see Alice Ripley (her understudy was in the day I saw Next to Normal), but the performance did not lack any power, as far as I could see. If I could look at a fault of the show, I would say that the ending was missing something. It felt like a very Broadway ending, more "happy" than "hopeful," and the ends that were left untied were not necessarily the ones I thought should be. I think it's particularly disturbing that my last perception of Natalie is that she is fated to become just like her mother, and I don't understand what that is supposed to say to the audience. The idea that she is doomed to that fate seems contrary to everything else in the play, which is about facing problems and working to be better - not perfect, but better.
Perhaps I'm being cynical, but when a critic goes through a list of every performer and writes a thing or two about how great they were, I can't help but to think that the critic didn't really watch the performance really carefully.
And did she actually write, "If “Next to Normal” does have a flaw, it’s in mirroring life too closely" ?
There were aspects of the tour production I thoroughly enjoyed including the set and the lighting, but I'm just surprised how this show keeps receiving raves. (Alice Ripley's voice was gone both times I saw her with that distracting singing; and with such a hype over the fact that a Tony Winner is touring with the show, I definitely expected more out of her.)
The performance of Next to Normal that I saw before it went on tour was one I also absolutely enjoyed. Although it is indeed emotionally exhausting, it is moving and I found it to be an insightful look into mental illness and the struggles people have who suffer from these illnesses during a time where psychology is still figuring these sicknesses out. The way the show does not offer solutions, but instead hope, I found to be realistic and more effective than an unrealistic happy ending.
I was very lucky to have seen "Next to Normal" in New York during its Broadway run, and I thought (and still do) that it is a phenomenal show. It is not perfect, but it explores emotions and problems that are relateable to today's society. The music is incredibly powerful and Ripley gave a great performance.
I hope that there are more original shows like "Next to Normal" in the future. It is a show very much about everyday life. Even if you or your family do not deal with the particular problems discussed in "Next to Normal" it shows a struggling family, and most people can relate to that. At it's core, the struggling family concept is nothing new, but in this case it was executed very well, with using mental health problems as its driving device.
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