Alice Ripley proving a tad elusive

This has got to be hurting ticket sales:

"According to reports from readers, Alice Ripley, the star of the superb touring production of "Next to Normal" did not perform in Chicago on Tuesday night, nor last Saturday afternoon, nor last Friday night.

According to Broadway in Chicago, the show's presenter, Ripley is contracted to perform her demanding role six out of eight weekly performances, and also took a personal day last week.

Readers (one of whom traveled four hours to see Ripley) report being given the option to exchange their tickets, although with no guarantee as to whether Ripley would then be performing. Her schedule is not announced in advance.

Several readers, a couple of whom have seen the show several times, have written admiringly of Ripley's understudy, Pearl Sun, whom I have not seen."

Theater Loop

At least the role appears to finally have an alternate.

Get Marin Mazzi, Jessica Phillips, or Catherine Porter IN. All excellent Dianas.

Marin Mazzie is not going to tour. Jessica Phillips is currently in a Broadway show. I doubt Catherine Porter, who has young kids, wants to go out on the road.

Besides, the tour is clearly built around Ripley. She's not going to be replaced.

Any chance the producers would hire another Diana cover?

Frankly, getting to see her turns out to be a dubious reward, at best. I saw her opening night of the St. Louis tour and her voice sounded terrible. I realize that if she's reading this I'll get derided for not being a Tony award winning actress myself, but the fact remains that she sounds pretty dreadful.

I posted earlier in this thread but I think she sounds like Alice... Her voice is so tired, but her belt is still strong - it's the quieter stuff that she's having more difficulty with. Every time I've seen her in this tour I've been impressed - If you can look past the rough vocal patches which are few and far between (my opinion), she is still living Diana as she did on Broadway.

Holistically, her performance is still incredible.

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I completely respect your opinion about her voice, PRS. A lot of people have said the same thing but I guess it didn't take anything away from the performance for me. Just out of curiosity, what did you think of her overall performance as Diana (looking past the vocal aspect)?

I guess I just love the show so much that something like the quality of her voice doesn't affect what I think about the performance as a whole. I'll keep traveling to see her until the tour ends because I just enjoy it.

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It's unfortunate that she's missing a lot of shows, but she did sound great at her recent concert. Much better than she'd sounded in a while.

I doubt they would let her take off a whole tour stop but the whole cast has a decent break at the end of May and beginning of June... May 23rd - June 6th. Hopefully that will help her somehow. She really does sound wonderful after a break. When she was doing her concerts at dopo teatro over the summer, she hadn't been playing Diana for a significant amount of time and she sounded INCREDIBLE.

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I heard that she was also out Sunday afternoon. Many people from my school went this past weekend (sucking up to the choir director who loves the show) and were quite disappointed to see Pearl. What annoys me most is that most of them can't see past the fact that they're not seeing the Tony-winner and don't give the understudy a chance to be good because "the other one won a Tony!" I'm seeing the show Sunday (I'm so excited--I've waited over two years to see this show) and I'm kind of hoping to see Pearl go on. I've never really loved Alice's voice, and I'm sure I wouldn't like how it sounds now. In the review in the Chicago Tribune, the critic was defending Alice Ripley's poor technique as portraying pain or something like that, but from the sound of it, it's really not intentional. Alice didn't have this much trouble on Broadway, did she? I know that her vocal health dipped toward the end of her run, but she had three or four months to recover. I don't remember hearing about her calling out this often.

She didn't perform last night and the people sitting next to me tried to go on Sunday and said they were told she wasn't performing then, either. They were pretty ticked off because they tried to schedule specifically to see Ripley based on the GLOWING RAVES in the Tribune which touted this tour as being superior to the original Broadway production with love letters to Ripley. Plus, she was scheduled to perform a cabaret act Monday night, but I didn't hear if she showed up for that or not. My mother was really bummed about not seeing Ripley, but all that vanished shortly into the first act and it was clear the audience was on board with the cast they were given (3 understudies: Diana, Natalie and Henry). There was applause in places I've never heard it before. Audible sniffing and sobbing. And outright CHEERS for the cast during the bows. The house was probably only 60% full, but it sounded like SRO. During intermission, the people I met were eating it up and after the show, my mother said, "I want to see it again." I heard nothing but positive buzz while making the long trek out to the street. Pearl Sun had the audience in the palm of her hand from I Miss the Mountains and I will say that Caitlin Kinnunen was the best and most convincing Natalie I've seen. She floored me.

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Updated On: 5/4/11 at 04:45 PM

So she did perform the concert. Yikes. Hope nobody rushed to buy tickets to Next to Normal thinking they'd get to catch her in the show.

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I saw it late in previews, and she was consistently flat the entire evening in her middle range around the first break (e-g). Painful to listen to, and sad to watch her do it to herself.

It's f@#%king ridiculous that she isn't showing up to her 8 shows a week and she is booking additional concert gigs in the city she is performing in. What a joke-clearly she has the producers by the balls thanks to her Tony and comes and goes as she pleases.

She should at least be planful about her absences and post them for theatre-goers, many of whom want to see her.

This will stick with people and they will stop showing up for her.

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