OUTscene Editor
The 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner now on tour at Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre with The Tony winning star, Alice Ripley. What I love about 'Some' National Tours is when they bring out all the Star power. (Like a few years ago when I saw Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal in 'Rent' or Harvey Fierstein in 'Fiddler'.). You get the same Broadway experience except with Better seats.
Next to Normal focuses, sometimes humorously but with piercing candor, on a middle-class wife and mother whose bipolar disease and clinical depression are fracturing her family.
The show's unconventional (But Awesome) unit set by Mark Wendland is a triple-decker steel structure studded with light bulbs and Warhol-esque projections of wide-open eyes.The Lights literly blind the audience.
Next to Normal also has an intense pop-rock score, with songs about drug therapy ("Who's Crazy/My Psychopharmacologist and I"), about the thrill of a manic high ("I Miss the Mountains"), and about rather morbid sibling rivalry ("Superboy and the Invisible Girl"). I loved Gabe's performace of 'I'm Alive", it was the perfect ballard.
The emotions run raw, the language gets rough. And if there's some glimmers of hope at the end of the tunnel ("Light"), the prognosis for the family of Diana Goodman (passionately portrayed here and on Broadway by Alice Ripley) remains murky.
Emma Hunton is terrific as Natalie, Diana's bright, abrasively alienated adolescent daughter.
Asa Somers gave a poignant account of the family as the devoted but ineffectual husband (and father), Dan.
Besides Ripley, and the awesome set, the Gay audience will enjoy the beefcake of Curt Hansen's Gabe, who is spotted in Boxers and a towel around his neck and Natalie's Druggie Boyfriend, Preston Sadleir's Henry came through in the meaty supporting role of Natalie's determined beau, as did Jeremy Kushnier's Dr Madden and Dr. Fine.
It had a Rent type of score with little bit of a (Seattle/Portland) 80's cult classic, Angry Housewives, mixed in with little of the Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? dynamic of the Mother/Son link of denial that leads to madness.
Next to Normal continues at the 5th Avenue Theater through March 13th. Click Here for more information.
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