THEATRE REVIEW: True Human Beauty in "Next to Normal" at Riverside

By Dennis Wemm
THEATRE CRITIC

“Next to Normal” Cast. Photo courtesy Riverside Center for the Performing Arts.

Next to Normal

by Tom Kitt and Bryan Yorkey

Presented by Riverside Center for the Performing Arts

In this presentation, Riverside achieves true human beauty in all aspects of the production, plain and simple. There are a lot of reasons, most of which rely on our past experiences with art and mental wellness. There will be a further examination of each aspect of production to follow, but you can simply follow that first sentence and decide whether or not to go.

Your first impression is of the set as you enter the space. You’ll see a kitchen upstage with a counter, sink, and kitchen table. It’s set up for four people. There’s a very long comfy sofa on stage right. The furniture and objects are a stark white. Above is hanging a large tilted and angled rectangular panel, whose shape and position echo the shape and position of the floor plan for the production. In it, there are can lights as you’d see in a modern room ceiling, apparently made of acoustical panels.

As far as themes are concerned, there will be no spoilers here, but you could easily look to such plays as A Doll’s House and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, pop cultural trends, and TV influences to find a sampling of the issues. In a way the show is as wild, fascinating, and multi-layered as the entire issue of mental health itself.

This home is a combination operating room and comfy family place. The ceiling panel is magic: projections tell you of the location the set is representing, reflect the mental state of the characters, and symbolically illustrate the main action for scenes. It’s a mirror of the emotional state of those inhabiting the space. I could talk here about Abstract Expressionism, but what we are seeing is a machine built to make the normally dressed, realistic human beings on it the tight focus of the show. We’ll spend the next 2+ hours inside their heads and their little universe of home not worrying about accurate pictures. If you really need a sink with running water, it’s there and it works but it’s not the star of the show.

In the background is the orchestra, actually a rock band with strings, with the instrument positions spread out evenly against the functional back wall of the actual stage. (It’s nice to see and admire the actual size of the Riverside space.) Simply, the band rocks, as does the musical score.

On the opening of the show we are presented with a family: Mom Diane (Adrianne Hick), Dad Dan (Andrew Foote), son Gabe (Mason Blaine), daughter Natalie (Madison Cox). We see a really harried morning of a school and work day with a highly typical-stereotypical-American family who are busy being their task roles. Dan is heading for work, Diane is cutely seducing him and embarrassing the teens. There seems to be nothing weird about this, you can see as much dysfunction on a TV cartoon sitcom. There are cues and we’re drawn into the story we think we’re seeing: Natalie is angry and fighting for control of herself and her life, Gabe clowns, Dan and Diane “finish” way too quickly. Gentle sarcasm mingles with true affection, and the kids start to leave for school, Dan for work. It looks like a normal frantic American breakfast.

And then Diane, still in her sexy nighty, starts to make lunch sandwiches. On the kitchen floor.

Photo courtesy Riverside Center for the Performing Arts.

The family views this with horror, not knowing how to react. Dan reaches a decision that Diane must receive medical care. And we meet another performer, Dr. Madden (Adian Chapman) who represents two separate characters and the mental health system. One is the clinical/chemical, the second is the verbal/counselor: don’t treat the illness, first unmask the symptoms and (wrongly) the probable cause and then (wrongly) the likely outcome of his therapy. When that falls apart we all surmise what’s going on underneath. The beginning of the show is a satire on the sad state of mental health treatment. But there are other twists-hairy and scary enough to populate any thriller. Which I am not going to talk about now.

The question is not whether Diane has mental health issues (she most certainly does) but what the basic cause of those issues is. The why question turns into a deeper mystery that the medical community first treats with over-medication and then therapy, which takes a wrong track.

Dan feels like he is being abandoned, and his dissonance does not let him free from his connection to Diane. He’s left with a commitment to her but no place to put it, no firm ground to stand on.

To their credit, it never settles on an easy answer.

Photo courtesy Riverside Center for the Performing Arts.

The show is about pain and how people are wired to deal with it. First we tamp it down, then we try to make the bad reactions go away, then we take the hard step of really finding out the causes. Then we experiment with cures. And that’s when it gets too complicated to deal with in an online review. Simple to say: this show must be experienced, and while it’s difficult at times, it’s still entertaining. The messages are there, but it’s not a show about messages. It’s about people, and it’s about love.

Many musical plays impress with size: big casts of people and long sessions of song and dance in formulaic arrangement, with lots of emotional connections supported with solos and broken up by choral numbers that flash and relieve us from the serious parts, lots of staging effects. This production provides an alternative: a near-opera (spoken scenes are present, but act only to propel from one gorgeous song to another) with a cast of six.

One of the hallmarks that Riverside is most proud of is the use of a live orchestra pit in productions, rather than electronically reproduced sound. This is obviously more expensive but it also makes for a more intense, connective relationship between singers and the music that backs them up. There is absolutely no sign of lip-synching or recorded music here. The performers, both singers and instrumentalists, throw themselves into the work with a gusto that simply explodes at times. Timing and cuing are perfect. At times the dueling amplifications can get in the way of understanding the lyrics, especially in the larger full-cast numbers, but the diction lockstep in the choral numbers is perfect.

Since the production hinges on the actors, and requires them to do instant 180 degree emotional reversals following each new revealed truth, a less flexible ensemble would be overwhelmed.

Photo courtesy Riverside Center for the Performing Arts.

Simply put, the script, director and cast understand what it means to be human at all stages of life. We see Dan and Diane as adults most of the time, although their past will return to tempt us into empathizing with the issues. Real life married actors Hick and Foote have true chemistry, they know how to fight each other, clown for each other, or give a glance or a small touch to a face or shoulder when they realize that their attempts to help each other may be making the problems worse. Their contact is real and they use it as a means of amplifying the internal life of their characters, the small heartbreaking moments. And that’s basically the definition of great acting.

Cox does something truly intelligent and heartfelt in portraying Natalie. It would be easy to say “teenage angst” to describe the character because that’s what we can see on her surface. She is a budding musician who at first attacks her keyboard with a difficult Mozart piece until we realize she’s really attacking herself. When fellow teen musician Henry, feelingly played by Ben Ribler, strikes up a flirting argument about jazz vs. classical music, they hit it off. And when Henry is about to leave because her rejection is too real, she brings him back by telling him he’s giving up too easily. In Natalie’s world, the abnormal is called normal so it can be discounted safely, and nothing that is said can be taken at face value. Small, heartbreaking moments.

And Blaine as Gabe simply must be seen to be believed.

When Dr. Madden (Chapman) is interviewing Diane for the first time, he’s introduced as a Ned Flanders clone: sweater, mustache, and avuncular manner. But Diane’s vision of him is what she and the score share with us, a screaming metal front man who’s assaulting her emotionally and invasively as he undermines her comfortable life-lies. Since we’ve seen the same actor playing the stiff and orthodox pill-pushing psychopharmacologist just as convincingly, we start to realize how far Diane’s visions are from reality, and how her illness is putting up barriers to defend itself.

Director Penny Ayn Maas allows the script to find itself beautifully. There’s very little formal realism to the show, which technically is a rock opera, but the characters are real even when they force their expressionistic visions onto a real-life situation. Maas uses every part of the stage and sparingly few technical tricks to make it happen. This makes it even more surprising and thrilling when a fully stage technical moment explodes a scene to a new level.

The design and production team is truly a team. The minimalist set (by Christian Fleming) is a blank canvas for the performers and the other designers that supports all the other production elements. There are subtle tricks: as we see the ceiling piece entering the theatre, it appears to be a white cellulose suspended ceiling; stark and clinical. Then projection designer Duncan Scarpa-Friedman makes it a sky, a cracked ceiling, a mass of blood, all appropriate and all blended into the action and all coordinated with Weston Corey’s masterful lighting in a way that connects what could be dueling visual elements. Except that those elements play nicely with each other.

Erin Walsh’s realistic, character based costumes are simply the clothes that the characters would choose to wear at that moment in the play’s shifting realities. Diane’s taupe robe (as she seeks comfort in the ordinary), to Natalie’s vixenish club wear as she melts down (or is she breaking free?), to Dan’s college-age fashion of the moment, to Henry’s shift from dressing for comfort to dressing up for a dance, to Dr. Madden’s shift out of Ned Flanders and into ordinary business casual therapist’s garb, to Gabe’s mercurial shift from black tee to less teen garb to less realistic looks; each is perfect for the moment and unique to the character.

All other design elements, sound, props, wigs are equally effective. Stage Manager Cody Medley guides the crews and performers in a deceptively minimal show to perfection in timing and logistics.

The show features many adult themes, and probably is not for all ages. Since it deals with mental illness in a way that’s real to the characters, but not graphic in representation, patrons should be aware of issues such as drug usage and abuse, suicide, depression, the corrosive effects of anxiety, and family breakups. However, these are dealt with in a suggested, positive, humane, and empathetic manner. The goal is catharsis, not shock; the effect is not upsetting but healing.

This may be the strongest production I’ve seen at Riverside, ever. You really should go.

Dennis Wemm is a retired professor of theatre and communication, having taught and led both departments at Glenville State College for 34 years. In his off time he was president and sometimes Executive Director of the West Virginia Theatre Conference, secretary and president of the Southeastern Theatre Conference, and generally enjoyed a life in theatre.

Support the Advance with an Annual Subscription or Make a One-time Donation

The Advance has developed a reputation for fearless journalism. Our team delivers well-researched local stories, detailed analysis of the events that are shaping our region, and a forum for robust, informed discussion about current issues.

We need your help to do this work, and there are two ways you can support this work.

• Sign up for annual, renewable subscription.

• Make a one-time donation of any amount.

Local Obituaries

To view local obituaries or to send a note to family and loved ones, please visit the link that follows.

This article is published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. It can be distributed for noncommercial purposes and must include the following: “Published with permission by FXBG Advance.”