My Thoughts on Next to Normal 5/10

Hi everyone. So I started a thread the other day about going to see Next to Normal for the first time knowing J. Robert Spencer was going to be out, and I was advised to see it anyway, because the show was that good. I ended up not getting rush tickets, but was able to get tickets from the very generous Mattrett, so I saw the show and didn't have to crane my neck from the front row!

This was the second-to-last "new musical" I had to see for 2008-2009 (still haven?t gotten around to Shrek) and, ultimately, was the third time I have been utterly disappointed in a show this season. I had insanely high expectation for 9 to 5 and found the show to be very "ho hum." I had similar expectations for West Side Story, and found myself even more bored out of my mind than I was at Dividing the Estate.

I had similar expectations for Next to Normal, because I had heard nothing but great things about the show from everyone I know that has seen it, and many people whose opinions I respect here on the boards. I went in expecting Alice Ripley's performance to be breathtaking, the story to be emotional and heartbreaking and the book/score to be earth-shattering.

I will start with Alice Ripley. She is giving a magnificent performance, and most likely win a Tony, but she is definitely not as untouchable as some of you make her out to be. The only reason I feel she appears a lock for this award is the lack of serious competition in the category. Nonetheless, and not having seen Sutton, Ripley IS giving the best nominated Leading Actress performance, but I would not be surprised if Allison Janney slipped in and took it from her... I also might not even be disappointed if such a thing were to happen.

As for the rest of the performances, there was nothing spectacular going on. The only exception was Jennifer Damiano, who is giving a great performance. I felt more teenage angst in her than I felt from the entire cast of Spring Awakening, and she has a great voice to boot. Aaron Tveit also has a great voice, but his spastic performance did not wow me. Adam Chanler-Berat was passable but annoying and Louis Hobson was nothing special.

Michael Berry was on for Dan and was, well, dreadful. In the scene where (SPOILER) Diana leaves, I cringed at the thought of Dan actually getting up and stopping her, just because I did not want to sit through any more of Berry's performance. (/SPOILER) His performance was too rigid and his voice was too harsh. Sadly, I did not enjoy the show enough to want to go back and see it with J. Robert Spencer. If it was his first performance, so be it, but still, I trusted you Next to Normal fans who gave me the green light to see it without him.

As for the story, I really, REALLY loved it (minus the forced ending). What a fantastic premise for a musical! I was absolutely captivated by everything on the surface, but found myself bored within the scenes, and I really don?t know why. A lot of things just fell flat and I was actually waiting for the scene to transition to something different, because I found myself just not caring about a lot of what was going on with the non-Diana characters. (-1 for Brian Yorkey)

Speaking of transitions, I absolutely loved the set. It was so fluid and fun to watch. Luckily it gave me a little more faith in the Scenic Design category this year, since Pal Joey and Guys and Dolls were not at all impressive. Nonetheless, the award is Billy's.

I am torn on the score. I LOVED the music. It was stunning and very cinematic. The lyrics, on the other hand, were awful and predictable. I don't know if anyone here caught The Black Monk off-Broadway this season, but I found myself in a similar situation. The lyrics were just... so bad and SO repetitive. (SPOILER) I mean, how many times can you say "I'm alive" in a song? especially when your character is dead? (/SPOILER) It just got irritating after a while. A lot of the rhyming was also forced, and in my book, the lyrics might keep Next to Normal from taking the Tony for Best Score, which it deserves. (-2 for Brian Yorkey)

So, overall, I really, really, really wanted to love Next to Normal, but I just didn't.

On the plus side, I caught the BRILLIANT 3:00 performance of God of Carnage, and man, can Matthew Warchus do no wrong? I really want him to tie with himself for Best Director of a Play (but if I had to choose, I would give it to him for Norman).

Updated On: 5/11/09 at 11:31 AM

I agree with a lot of what you said about Next to Normal. I really wanted to love it too, but was also disappointed. I think Alice will win, but if she was up against some of the other great performances of the decade (Clark in Piazza, Ebersole in Grey Gardens, LuPone in Gypsy) she wouldn't have a chance.

Glad you enjoyed God of Carnage though. Isn't Matthew Warchus awesome! Didn't he direct Boeing-Boeing last year too? If so he's put three amazing productions on Broadway without missing a beat.

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Finally someone I can agree with about this show!

I think the show has so much promise, but the whole show just comes off as "eh" to me. Ripley is fine in the role, but she didn't wow me. There were no big emotional break downs, no big dramatic scene. She just belts her face off, and that's about it.

Is J. Robert Spencer going to be back tomorrow night??

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"I agree about Ripley; I don't think any year this decade, save for this one, was wholly weak enough for her performance to be the clear front-runner."

..........what!? wow. no.

I agree about the show. I was very under whelmed by it. I think a lot of the problem for me was that is a sing through. Many times I found them singing about something for four minutes (and some pretty lame lyrics) which could have been conveyed in one well written line.
With all the sing through segments all the score began to sound a like after a while causing the extreme sense of boredom I began feeling at the end of act 1. Once bored it was hard to come back and I was anxious for the show to end.

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Yeah... he was definitely not dreadful. I'm honestly just disappointed mostly in the score. I was waiting for the song "I miss the mountains" cause I had heard how amazing it was... bleh. Nothing was really memorable to me. The only song I loved was "Superboy" and I thought the opening number was great. I remember listening to a song from previous productions called "Growing up unstable" and learned they had left it out of the Broadway show because it didn't fit somehow. I don't understand because I thought it would have been a great act two opener. And that was one song I thought was awesome.

I had a completely different reaction. I thought the show was wildly original and I thought it was very successful in achieving its goals. The initial exposition was tough going, I thought, but once we reached I Miss the Mountains the show seemed to fly by.

I'm sorry you thought a lot of the scenes fell flat. I found them nearly riveting. Just as you can't explain why they didn't work for you, it's hard to explain why they did work for me. All the actors just seemed so invested and although it was intense and tough going there for a while, I was continually interested in the story and in the characters. The one area where I felt let down was when Diana left. I didn't really "buy it." But all the relationships seemed very clearly defined and I found a lot was at stake and I was anxious to see how it would play out.

I found this to be the most exciting score of the year, one that really worked to bring out the essence of the story in a unique way. The staging was also original and clever. I just found with this show a reason to sit up and give my full attention which I didn't feel as much with other musicals I've seen so far (Billy Elliot, West Side Story, Shrek, 9 to 5).

I was very moved by the show and thought Alice gave one of the best, most believable performance I've ever seen... and Aaron was pretty graceful, I thought!

I was there Sunday afternoon as well, and thought Berry was in every way remarkable; he seemed entirely integrated into the company, as if he'd played the show for weeks. If his voice isn't as attractive as Spencer's (which I just heard on the CD), the difference seems marginal. The role is a challenge, because the man is so beaten down, in effect weakened. He really cannot be played like Billy Bigelow, or the show would make no sense.

I think the show's ambitions are so extraordinary, I forgive it's occasional lapses, (to me, there are still a few too many moments that suggest social satire, despite all the collaborators telling us they cut all that). It dares to be 'earnest' however, in an era when all must be irony-tinged to be art.

Why does any serious story about ordinary people in ordinary circumstances have to get the put-down "Lifetime movie"? Let's give that a rest. Musical theater that takes on the domestic arena, as opposed to a cartoon world, or a remake of a B movie, has a right to exist. Next to Normal has far more in common with ORDINARY PEOPLE than a standard-issue movie of the week. But I hear the naysayers say "yeah, but ORDINARY PEOPLE is a Lifetime movie." We have a cultural bias against material that dramatizes how we live now in various states of quiet desperation. I'm personally tired of caricature, 4th wall crumbling wink-winking at me, and silliness. NORMAL dares to sing about things we don't like to sing about. Sometimes that reduces the lyrical expression to banalities -- but even that is one of the points of the show. And its central conceit, potentially a cliche, is expertly worked out and movingly employed.

People around me Sunday were in tears -- and to my thinking those tears are entirely earned.

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