BWW:UK ON Broadway - Part 4

I have never had any truck with the idea that musicals are "unrealistic" and thus devoid of merit. All artforms take liberties with reality and realism; that's what makes them beautiful. When people mock musical theatre because characters just burst into song, it makes me wonder if they've never had any moments of high emotion in their life; certainly the impulse to sing a joyful up-tempo number to celebrate or a moving ballad to wallow is something I would have thought most people can understand.

And the offering-up of emotion - the chance to feel, to empathise, to learn, to move - is one of the reasons I love musical theatre so much. Sure, I also appreciate good tunes, characterisation, lighting, costuming; but if there's no soul, if there's nothing there for me to relate to, if the narrative is glossed over with a heavy layer of irony, that is not a musical I can love.

When I come out of a show having laughed and cried and feeling like I've taken a blow to my midriff and can't think of anything else but the characters, the music and the story, that is when I know I've seen something special.

And that is how I feel today after having seen Next To Normal.

I'm fairly sure most musical theatre fans will know at least a little bit about this show by now; and if you haven't seen it in person you'll have seen clips of it or listened to the cast recording. All I can say is that I had too, and I still wasn't prepared for seeing it live (that's "live" in both homonymic senses). Even an obsessive-compulsive like me was able to overlook the irritating mistakes in lighting and sound last night (the constant sound of the filters whirring as they desperately tried to get to the right place detracted slightly from the drama) and concentrate wholeheartedly on the show. Weirdly, on reflection, that may even have helped; one of the problems I've had with seeing Broadway shows in the past is the sheer technical glossiness that's made it hard for the characters to appear human; here, as both Alice Ripley and Brian D'Arcy James cried and their vocals slipped ever so slightly, it was genuine theatre.

Enough. Go and see it. And bring it to the West End, please, someone.