Kevin Vortmann, Tim Young, Laurie Veldheer and Danny Henning. Photo by Michael Brosilow.
It starts like a classic sit-com. Morning chaos reigns as faces are shaved and backpacks packed. But as the characters in Next to Normal sing us through their daily rituals (“Just Another Day”), you can tell that something isn’t quite right. There’s a lot of talk of keeping up appearances. And a sense of worry seems to lurk under the peppy melodies. Then Diana, the mom, starts making lunch sandwiches by spreading a whole loaf of bread on the floor, peanut butter jar at the ready. As the music stops she looks up at her staring family. “I just wanted to keep up with the lunches this week,” she says. And Dan, the dad, utters the line that tells us we’re not in "Brady Bunch"-land: “Maybe we should call Dr. Fine.”
The good doctor is, of course, Diana’s psycho-pharmacologist (a word, I bet, you never thought you’d hear in the refrain of a “show tune”). And Next to Normal is a gloves-off tour through Diana’s bouts with doctors and her battles with personal demons and mental illness – all set to a high energy pop-rock score. With music by Tom Kitt and words by Brian Yorkey, the show was one of the most critically celebrated of past seasons, and won several Tony awards and the Pulitzer Prize, a rare event for a musical. They were all deserved.
Even though the show is decidedly contemporary, it taps into themes that go back decades in American drama – dysfunctional families, the insidiousness of illusions, the destructive persistence of ideals. Musically, it shares a lot with Rent, but the family psychodrama at the heart of its story is a little bit Glass Menagerie and a lot Long Days Journey into Night.
But it’s also a musical – or a piece of music theater. So while Next to Normal shares ideas with O’Neill, they don’t register with the slow burn of plays like Long Days Journey. Instead, they hit hard, moving relentlessly from one explosive moment to the next. It’s definitely theater for a post-MTV generation.
But it’s electrifying nonetheless. Brave and unflinching in its portrait of contemporary family life, and sprinkled with a mordant wit as well. And Mark Clements and the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre cast deliver an absolutely first rate production.
When the Rep announced it would be staging Next to Normal, I had just seen the Chicago stop of the show’s post-Broadway tour. And I had a hard time imagining the show in the much smaller Quadracci Powerhouse Theater. But Clements and Music Director Dan Kazemi scale the production well, without losing any of its powerful moments. In dialogue and in song, there’s an intimacy that draws the audience in. So the big belt-em-out emotions of the climactic musical numbers aren’t just show-biz bombast – they’re a genuine expression of human drama. In fact, getting close to this story and these characters at The Rep offered more connections and rewards than the Broadway show.
Sarah Litzsinger’s performance as Diana was at the top of the “rewards” list, handling the vocal and emotional challenges of the role with great spirit and coherence: Diana didn’t seem to shift registers as she started to sing – it simply seemed a way for her character to express herself. Many in the cast have Broadway pedigrees, and it showed. But Danny Henning stood out for the charming goofiness of Henry, the “stoner” boyfriend of Diana’s daughter.
This is one of the first regional productions of Next to Normal, and it’s a brave choice for The Rep. Anyone skeptical of Mark Clements’ decision to ad musical theater to The Rep mix will have a hard time arguing that shows like this one are serious and exhilarating expressions of American theater’s best stuff.
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