Review - Next to Normal: Is Normal The New nor'mal:?

It's a funny thing with musicals about women with psychiatric disorders; they seem to be more accessible when focused on the way loved ones try and achieve some kind of normalcy while dealing with the problem, rather than being about the disorder itself. Back in the autumn of '05, Off-Broadway's Transport Group premiered nor'mal:, Yvonne Adrian, Cheryl Stein and Tom Kochan exceptional musical about a family's attempt to stay functional while dealing with the teenage daughter's anorexia. Just a few weeks earlier the New York Musical Theatre Festival featured Feeling Electric, composer Tom Kitt and bookwriter/lyricist Brian Yorky's hard driving tale of a suburban mom being treated for clinical depression.

Perhaps if nor'mal: wrapped up its Off-Broadway gig at a time when 15 Broadway theatres were suddenly empty, some adventurous producer might have risked taking the intelligent chamber musical uptown. As it stands now, the show is enjoying a new life as a valuable high school learning tool, with productions prompting discussions of eating disorders among students. Meanwhile, Feeling Electric eventually found its way Off-Broadway last season, substantially revised and rechristened as Next To Normal. After more revisions and a stint in D.C., Next To Normal became a beneficiary of this past winter's deluge of closings, moving into valuable 45th Street property at Broadway's Booth Theatre.

And while I'll admit the loud, raucous and darkly-humored Feeling Electric was more to my personal taste ("Taking a semi-automatic and shooting as many popular kids as possible is really the only sane response to high school."), the latest incarnation of Next To Normal - which has turned a 180 from being a musical about depression to one about a family's efforts to keep the disease from tearing them apart - is a far better musical. In fact, it's only the existence of a Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls that keeps Next To Normal from being the best written musical currently on Broadway; and having West Side Story around is all that keeps it from being the most daring.

Details of the plot are best discovered through Kitt's gorgeously textured score (the hard rock domination of previous versions has been infused with more jazz, pop and a bit of country) and Yorky's plain-spoken, but absorbing narrative. (Despite their extraordinary circumstances, the characters are pretty much everyday people, realistically reflected in his uncomplicated lyrics.) Alice Ripley's versatile rock/pop/soul vocals give exciting illustration to the conflicting emotions of a mom whose bi-polar episodes were triggered by a long-ago tragedy. Though her multitude of medications are a source of frustration (and light humor in the song, "My Psychopharmacologist and I"), the score gives her a heart-sinking moment, "I Miss The Mountains," to mourn her loss of feeling when one treatment seems to take hold.

J. Robert Spencer gives a dutifully subtle performance as her loyal husband, trying to act as the family's steadfast anchor while Aaron Tveit flashes rock star charisma as their attention-hungry son. (His anthemic, "I'm Alive" is both the show's catchiest tune and, in context, most horrific musical moment.) Playing a parallel to the adults' relationship, Jennifer Damiano and Adam Chanler-Berat are warmly empathetic as the daughter who is afraid of intimacy for fear that she'll grow up to be like mom and her new wanna-be boyfriend doing his best to be supportive. Louis Hobson adds fine support as a pair of doctors, a duo role that has been significantly cut down since the Feeling Electric days. Michael Grief's direction has steadily softened from the previous rock concert-like staging to something more human without losing the fierce kinetic drive.

Being the type of musical that is frequently labeled, "not right for Broadway" (Too small? Too Intelligent? Too good?), it's hard to predict if Next To Normal would have made it to the Booth so quickly after its Off-Broadway run if it weren't for the economic decline. But however it got here, it's nIce To have well-written, interesting musical theater that's a bit off from the norm.

Photos by Joan Marcus: Top: Alice Ripley and J. Robert Spencer; Bottom: Jennifer Damiano, Aaron Tveit and Adam Chanler-Berat

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