BWW Reviews: NEXT TO NORMAL Brings a Softer Touch to Family Dysfunction at Stage 62

When NEXT TO NORMAL first played Off-Broadway, it was a surrealistic, pitch-black tragicomedy from the perspective of desperate housewife Diana Goodman. By the time it made it to Broadway, much of the comedy and surrealism had been trimmed away, leaving us with a small-scale family tragedy lightened by moments of humor. The show won Tony awards and the Pulitzer Prize, but many critics questioned if the show itself was good,or if notoriously eccentric Broadway star and internet personality Alice Ripley was simply incredibly convincing as a crazy person. I had wondered that myself on more than one occasion, as Ripley's performance was often semi-intentionally frightening; one could easily see her self-destructing like Michael Keaton in BIRDMAN at any point during the show. (This effect was more pointed during previews, when Diana's first mental breakdown was triggered not by the stress of home life, but by being overwhelmed with options at Costco.) Without the force of nature that is Ripley in the leading role, would the show still stand?

Answer: yes, it does. And one might even say it stands better.

Stage 62 director Stephen Santa, at the Andrew Carnegie Free Library and Music Hall, presents the clearest, most coherent NEXT TO NORMAL I've ever seen. It's true that he's shaved off some of the rough edges, some of the confrontational "this is real life, these are real issues" attitude that made NEXT TO NORMAL perhaps the closest thing to a 21st-century RENT so far. But in place of the starkness and slightly chilly tone of the Broadway version, he shows us a real, and troubled, family searching for light in the darkness. If you haven't seen NEXT TO NORMAL yet, and know nothing about its plot, I'd advise you to stop here and just go see the show, because it's impossible to talk much about the piece without a few spoilers. Given that the central twists of the show are well-known, and were explained in the Tony Awards broadcast anyway, I imagine it's not much of a secret, so you have been warned.

Something is seriously wrong in the Goodman family household. Diana Goodman (Cynthia Dougherty, giving an award-worthy performance) is bouncing from manic to depressive faster than usual, despite the work of psychopharmacologist Dr. Fine (Jason Michael Swauger) to essentially chemically lobotomize her. Her frequent mood swings, loss of a filter and "odd and alarming sexual feelings" disturb and confuse her husband Dan (Chad Elder) and neglected teenage daughter Natalie (Kristin Carmella), especially as many of her bizarre feelings and fantasies center around golden boy Gabe (Nick Black), her first child. To make matters worse, Gabe has been dead for almost twenty years, but Diana still sees and communicates with him. When a well-meaning psychologist (Jason Michael Swauger again) inadvertantly blows the lid off Diana's psyche with talk therapy, hypnotism and electroconvulsive treatments, all hell breaks loose in Diana's mind, leaving her in a tug of war between her living and dead family.

Cynthia Doughterty's performace as Diana Goodman is revelatory, as she handles the tricky task of being both insane and aware of one's own insanity. Her Diana, even at her most delusional, seems to realize full well that something is wrong with her, making her a more grounded and ultimately tragic figure than Ripley's Diana, who seemed to go with the flow from one mania to the next. Whether Diana is imagining come-ons where there were none, making sandwiches on the floor in a mental fugue, or hallucinating an Oedipal relationship with her dead son, there is always a wry, sad irony in Dougherty's performance, as if Diana can't break away, but can't commit entirely to the world she sees. Her grounded performance gives additional truth to Chad Elder's role as frustrated husband Dan, who sings in "I've Been" about how he must be both husband and parent sometimes to his troubled wife. It's easy to see his mixed feelings when you're scared FOR Diana, not scared OF her.

There's a little less fear all around in Santa's staging, which focuses on the family drama and moves away from the psychological thriller elements of Brian Yorkey's book and lyrics. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Nick Black's nuanced, understated performance as Gabe. The libretto is intentionally vague about the nature of Gabe's presence in the Goodman home. Is he Diana's hallucination? Is he a real ghost? Can anyone other than Diana see him? None of these questions are definitively answered, and the line between reality and fantasy becomes extremely blurry in Act 2. But while Aaron Tveit's Gabe was gradually revealed as a somewhat malevolent being, cruelly manipulating and tormenting the Goodmans for the power their belief and gave him, Black finds a sympathetic core in the enigmatic character. His Gabe, much like Dougherty's Diana, is an object of pity and not horror, struggling to survive and not be forgotten. When Tveit sang "I'm Alive," it was his reveal as a villain; when Black sings it, it's a plea not to be forgotten, to be allowed to exist. Even his physical type differentiates him from Tveit's more sinister portrayal- while Tveit was an uncanny Adonis with no resemblance to the rest of the family, Black's tall, thin frame, dark hair and slightly hipster appearance make him look like precisely the son the Goodmans would have had. Though he doesn't get the shower scene or stripper pole moments that the Broadway production infamously had, he doesn't need them, as his performance hits closer to the heart.

The play's secondary plot is somewhat underwritten compared to Diana's arc, but in this subtler, less aggressive production it stands out more prominently when the pyrotechnics are stripped away. High school senior Natalie has a promising life ahead of her if she doesn't turn out like her mother, and her relationship with lovable slacker and pot enthusiast Henry (Mason Lewis) appears to be a replay of the young Diana's relationship with Dan in her college years. As Diana fights towards sanity and stability, Natalie begins a downward spiral of her own. Lewis hits the perfect sweet spot between Dan and Gabe, with bits of each of their mannerisms and behaviors- enough to alternately endear him to the family and make him an uncanny presence in their darker moments. Kristin Carmella also does an excellent job as the troubled daughter, even providing a wilder and more chaotic presence to balance Dougherty's more subtle and restrained Diana. Jason Michael Swauger is a welcome presence as the two doctors, though the role is somewhat awkwardly written- Dr. Madden, the experimental psychologist, swings from comic relief in his first scenes to being the straight man of Act 2. Swauger plays the role with genuine care and a light touch, finding the empathetic core of a character that can be played anywhere between a savior and a predator.

Tom Kitt's music sounds as good as ever- beyond the theatrical influences obvious on the surface, one can hear clear traces of Dolly Parton and Green Day written into the mix. The band, led and music directed by Lena Gabrielle and bolstered by several local session musicians, lets the drama breathe, dialing back the propulsive, spit-it-out-fast-as-you-can rhythm in many of the songs to allow them to flow like dialogue. In most cases, NEXT TO NORMAL is a dark show, bordering on bleak. It's been accused of being a Lifetime movie set to music, or of being A DOLL'S HOUSE for the modern era. Maybe these are true, and maybe they aren't bad things to be. But in Stage 62's passionate performance, I saw for the first time the possibility that there could still be a happy ending for these broken people. In the final moments of the show, Santa brings back a near iconic image from Act 1, then subverts it, turning it from a symbol of dread into a symbol of hope. It's an apt metaphor not only for the characters in the piece, but for the way Santa has reimagined the entire show

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