Review: NEXT TO NORMAL at Riffe Center Studio 1

Sometimes you can tell a lot about a production even before you enter the theatre. For example, the Columbus Children’s Theatre placed a large fishbowl of Kleenex packets in the lobby for attendees of its musical, NEXT TO NORMAL.

By intermission, there were only four packets left.

The show runs Oct. 25-Nov. 10 at Studio One at the Riffe Center (77 South High Street in downtown Columbus) and Nov. 14-16 at the Weathervane Playhouse (100 Price Street in Newark). The six-person cast takes its audience on an emotional, two-act roller coaster ride as Diana Goodman (Rachel Hertenstein) fights her way through depression, regression, medication, and finally, hints of an imperfect restoration.

Written by Brian Yorkey (lyrics) and Tom Kitt (music), NEXT TO NORMAL was nominated for 11 Tony Awards in 2009, taking home wins for Best Original Score, Best Orchestration, and Best Actress in a Musical (Alice Ripley).

The CCT version of the musical, directed by David J. Glover, brings theater goers into the living room of the Goodman household where an overwhelmed husband Dan (Christian Cooper), a “perfect" son Gabriel (Tanner Wink) and angsty and ignored honor student Natalie (Jamie Mayfield) are concerned about Diana’s mental health.

Dan leans on Dr. Fine (Jordan Young) to keep his bipolar wife medicated enough to function normally. When his wife still has manic episodes, Dan and Diana turn to Dr. Madden (also played by Young), who suggests electroshock therapy might be a route to the cure.

The shock therapy is “successful” in that it removes all the memories of the trauma that caused her emotional breakdown. However, the treatment takes away Diana’s other memories as well. She is left in an unfamiliar house filled with a family of strangers.

Hertenstein conquers a very complicated role, making Diana’s frustration and anxiety seem real while also capturing the comedic sides of her character. When Dan asks if she flushed all her depression medication, she says with a smile, “we have the happiest septic tank in the neighborhood.”

Cooper’s like a stellar point guard in that he makes everyone else around him better. His wonderful tenor voice complements whoever he is singing with, whether it is Hertenstein, Young, Wink, or Mayfield.

The Goodman kids, Mayfield’s Natalie and Wink’s Gabriel also shine. As an actress, Mayfield captures perfectly what it is like to be an overlooked teenager. As a singer, she beautifully navigates the Yorkey-Kitt score. Wink thrives in the freedom of the Gabe role and his energetic delivery of “I’m Alive” is one of the show’s many highlights.

Outside of the Goodman clan, Sara Librandi carries off Henry’s transition from a stoner who MacGyvers an apple to a bong to Natalie’s smitten boyfriend, who spends his evenings hunting for her in nightclub after nightclub.

Young is brilliant as Diana’s two doctors who couldn’t be more different from each other. Dr. Fine is dry and humorless as he pushes drugs like candy from a Pez dispenser. In her mind’s eye, Diana sees Dr. Madden as a rock star after her husband describes him that way. At the initial meeting, Young leap frogs between Diana’s vision of a hair band rocker wailing, “Let’s get it on right now, baby!” and being a straightlaced, concerned doctor, “I said, let’s get started … Are you nervous, Diana?”

The play is filled with the minute touches that add to the completeness of the show.

• Next to the tissue bowl, CCT offers a placard which offers the phone numbers for several mental health crisis centers.
• For the song, “The Psychopharmacologist and I,” Costume Designer Megan Starr had the names of the prescriptions Diana is taking sewn into the white lab jackets of the performers. As Diana recounts “these are a few of my favorite pills,” the actors pull back the lab coats to reveal “Zoloft and Paxil and Buspar and Xanax, Depakote, Klonopin, Ambien and Prozac.”
• Sami Tamulonis (scene designer), Jennifer Sansfacon (light designer) and Ryan Shreve (projection director) designed a unique set that appears to have several stain glass windows. At first, the windows look out into a perfect suburban cul-de-sac. As Diana sings “I Miss the Mountains,” the windows morph into visions of the highlands. When the musical moves into the office of Dr. Fine, the windows transform into shelves of scholarly books. For Diana’s mental breakdowns, the windows alter to cracked, shot out panes of glass, static images, and projections of Diana and Gabriel screaming.

While they are tucked away on the top floor of the Goodman house, the five-piece orchestra, conducted by Emerson Slicer, cements together the show’s score. Matthew Kinnear’s violin offers up a haunting facet to the music while Slicer (piano), Zsolt Dvornik (guitar), Jenna Jaworski (bass), and Drew Martin (percussion) offer up a rock groove.

The cast and crew adjust well even when things go awry. On the Oct. 27 show, a keyboard outage caused a halt in the action in the middle of “Make Up Your Mind/Catch Me I’m Falling.” Ten minutes later, Cooper and Hertenstein returned to the stage and started the scene over as if nothing had happened.

NEXT TO NORMAL is one of those shows that sticks with you for a long time after you leave the parking garage. And by the show’s end, you might need something stronger than a tissue.

Photo credit: Kyle Long

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