Next to Normal, Alice Ripley question

Hi everyone,

I recently saw Next to Normal for the first time, and enjoyed everyone's voices overall. I was especially taken by Jennifer Damiano's (Natalie) performance - She's so charismatic on stage, and her voice of course is really great and appropriate for the character. I noticed, though, that in some of the songs sung by Alice Ripley (Diana) she seemed a little flat. As in, the notes themselves sounded flat to me (her acting was the opposite of flat).

I know there must be some N2N/Allice Ripley fans on here, so hopefully you won't take this the wrong way...but did anyone else notice this when they saw her?

It seems like that is a fairly typical complaint about her performance.

She will have a facebook status about this thread soon!

Updated On: 4/2/10 at 03:29 PM

I actually thought she sounded better than usual on Sunday night.

I saw her 8 times and everytime she has been like that.

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Well, in her defense, I hadn't listened to the Cast Album or was familiar with any of the music from the show other than "Superboy" before I saw it. So I thought it was possible that the songs were supposed to sound that way. Maybe even an artistic choice on the part of the actress to somehow evoke the turmoil of a mentally ill mother and wife (I know that's a stretch haha, but hey).

Anyway, interesting to hear I'm not the only one that noticed this...regardless of the reason for it.