Review: NEXT TO NORMAL At Ridgefield Theater Barn

[pictured are Marilyn Olsen as Diana and Rob Bassett as Gabe]

Whenever I get the chance, I tell theater people and theater-goers who’ve never been to Ridgefield Theater Barn (RTB) in western Connecticut to do themselves a favor and check it out. 

Among local performing venues, it is warmly welcoming and pointedly unique. The main distinction that sets apart this intimate black-box theater is its cabaret seating at four-tops and high-tops. The ticket-holders who fill those seats are encouraged to arrive up to an hour before showtime with their own store-bought or home-made picnic basket, as it were. Call it bring-your-own-dinner theater. The opportunity to consume a repast of food and drink a few feet from a stage about to come alive is a delightfully different and appetizing way to consume live theater.

For its ambitious production of acclaimed musical Next to Normal – playing through June 24 (tickets at ridgefieldtheaterbarn.org) – our friends at RTB have re-arranged the room to create an immersively kinetic experience for audience and actors both. (Who needs a VR headset?!) 

For this production, tables and chairs have been pushed to the perimeter, lining the parallel side walls that face each other. That leaves the middle of the room and the fore and aft walls in which the performers move about, and move they do, in constantly fluid motion, under the sure-handed and sure-footed direction of Matt Austin and Jessica Chesbro. The effect is engagingly kaleidoscopic in a way proscenium staging is not.

A model of modern Broadway musicals that have dared to mine raw and dark stories for their plot (think Spring Awakening and Dear Evan Hansen), Next to Normal made a splash 15 years ago, with its pulsating score animating the story of a highly dysfunctional family (the Goodmans) whose mother, Diana (Marilyn Olsen), is in the throes of life-threatening bipolar disorder. A disclaimer in the program advises that themes include grief, suicide, substance abuse, memory loss, psychopharmocology and mental health.

My taste in musical theater favors the likes of Kern, Loesser, Porter, Rodgers & Hammerstein, and, of course, the incandescent Bard of Broadway, Sondheim. This show is not that. The almost seamless tapestry of music that suffuses Next to Normal borders on it being an ultra-hip operetta. 

In fact, the word that sprang to mind as I took it all in is recitative, the opera technique where dialog is spoken in musical beats. In other words, this is not music that composers Tom Kitt (music) and Brian Yorkey (lyrics and book) wrote to be hummed as you leave the theater. That didn’t stop the show from winning the Tony Award for best score (along with two other Tonys), not to mention earning the play the coveted Pulitzer Prize for drama.

Ridgefield Theater Barn is nothing if not ambitious, as this production amply illustrates. A show like Next to Normal is no easy feat to pull off, as its original iteration off-Broadway attests. It was not received well at first, and then was retooled to award-winning effect.

As Diana, the show’s frantic and fraught anchor in constant danger of sinking, Marilyn Olsen leaves it all up there on stage in a fierce and physically demanding portrayal. She must carry the show on her back, and that she does, with impressive fortitude and pipes. Brava!

The entire cast is to be commended for their investment of non-stop energy and high-stakes emoting. Chris Fay, as Diana’s husband Dan, evinces empathy for his unenviable plight caring for his wife. As their semi-estranged, self-reliant daughter Natalie, Hannah Rapaglia brings to her role an affable authenticity and poignancy. Notable also are the full-on efforts of cast members Rob Bassett as son Gabe, Bill Warncke as Dr. Madden/Dr. Fine, and Marc Costanzo as Henry.

Certainly not to be overlooked is the dynamic six-piece band, led by conductor and pianist Sarah Fay, with Charles Casimira on bass, Christian Peragine on drums, Tim Maynard on guitar, Blake Hansen on violin/synthesizer, Isabella Palacpac on cello. They make a terrific ensemble of professional players who bring the score to vibrant life.

Sound design is by Jay Austin and lighting design by Mark Hankla.

The reconfigured space housing Next to Normal assuredly is intriguing, and engaging, to a point. When your attention is fixed on the mini-stage in the center of the room, where much of the action unfolds, and you suddenly hear a voice coming from a different direction, out of your purview (such as against the back wall), causing you to turn your neck thataway, it can feel a little like watching a tennis match.

Most of the rejiggered seating seemed fine, but in our middle-of-the-row, high-top seats,  we were unable to get to them or leave them without requiring people at the ends to momentarily vacate their perch. That’s not to say the immersive experience wasn’t worthwhile. It has a lot to recommend it in placing the audience closer to the performance. It’s just that it takes some getting used to, depending where you sit. 

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