BWW Reviews: Pretty Normal - NEXT TO NORMAL Now at Center Stage

Or perhaps a better title for this review should be "pretty typical," i.e. typical for a modern American musical.

First, let's talk about what is right about Baltimore's Center Stage's production of the Tom Kitt (music) and Brian Yorkey (book, lyrics) musical, "Next to Normal." The show is worth checking out for the subject matter alone-mental illness, that "final frontier" of medicine that we are only beginning to explore, and a topic that is rife with misconceptions, stereotypes and just plain ignorance.

Personal admission here. I was diagnosed with "major depression with OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder)" in 1991 and have undergone both pharmacological (hello, Prozac Nation!) and talk therapy, and am a better human being for it. So I can say that this musical is on target with songs like "Who's Crazy/My Psychopharmacologist and I" where Diana (Ariela Morgenstern) and her doc (Matt Lutz) play the game of anti-depressant, anti-psychotic, anti-schizophrenic, anti-bipolar drug roulette in hopes of striking upon a winning combination of meds which, as is so often the case, leaves the patient "feeling nothing," as Diana declares while Dr. Fine sighs in relief, "patient stable."

"Next to Normal" is a courageous piece of work, as it does an admirable job of showing the impact a family member's mental illness can have on those around her, from a daughter (Natalie, played by Kally Duling) who has spent her formative years feeling ignored, playing not even second, but THIRD fiddle, behind her mother's illness and the unpurgeable memory of her dead brother, Gabe, as in the song "Superboy and the Invisible Girl."

As is typical of a Center Stage production, the acting is top flight and high energy (dare I say...MANIC?), an eye-catching two-level set (which offers a lot of opportunities for clever choreography), a set designed to be a modern couple's home (so modern in fact I thought initially this wasn't someone's home but rather a high-end urban office) and use of multi-media, video, light and sound to help set mood and express everything from electroshock therapy to flying over mountain ranges, etc.

What I find less appealing about this musical is how it reminds me so much of just about every other American musical of recent years. In a production with 30 or so songs, not one is memorable, you don't' find yourself humming any melodies or recalling any passages of song. Plus, there's the ongoing trend of songs that seem more spoken than sung, which makes one wonder, why do this as a musical? Why not a straight play? It's more like a dramusical, a drama in a musical's clothes, that tries very hard to be hip as though that can be accomplished just by having lyrics that include the "seven dirty words you can't say on the radio" (though I admit it would be fun to take this approach to rewriting OKLAHOMA, or THE MUSIC MAN).

The stereotypes rest not in the play's subject matter but in the characters...Natalie is an angry teenage girl who crosses her arms in front of herself a lot, generally fumes, but... likes Mozart! Her wannabe boyfriend, Henry (Matthew Rodin), is a stoner-geek who rebels against the tyranny of classical music by ...preferring jazz! Teen angst meets teen love meets teens with parent issues. So, typical teen stuff.

The most original character is Justin Scott Brown's Gabe who, of course, doesn't really exist outside of Diana's mind. He's the 18 year old boy Diana's dead-at-8-months baby would have been had he grown up, and he's somewhat Mephistophelean in nature, tempting Diana, his own mother, to take her own life. Rather than a devil figure, all in black, he is all in white, like an angel, but also like an orderly you might find in a mental hospital. Ironically enough, the character who is most like a ghost isn't Gabe, but Diana's husband, Dan, who has the thankless job of trying to help his wife, keep the family together, be the family breadwinner (when he isn't helping Diana make sandwiches on the kitchen floor) but seems to have no essence himself. When Winther sings as Dan "He's Not Here" about his dead son, the song could be as much about himself as about Gabe.

"Next to Normal" is a musical and production that I respect for its attempt to educate, to do its part to make mental illness a more "mainstream subject"; I liked for example, that there was no Hollywoodish "happy ending" with Humpty Dumpty put back together again, because life doesn't work that way. There is hope, however, and that's enough.

"Next to Normal" continues its run in Center Stage's Head Theater, 700 N. Calvert Street, now through Nov. 16th. For more information, call the box office at 410-332-0033 or visit www.centerstage.org.

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