[NEohioPAL] Review of "Next to Normal" at the Beck Center

[Bob Abelman]

Lakewood's Beck Center offers an engaging, muscular 'Next to Normal'

Bob Abelman

News-Herald, Chagrin Valley Times, Solon Times, Geauga Times Courier

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics 

 

This review will appear in the News-Herald on 3/8/13

 

In the complicated enterprise of making theater, rarely is the whole greater than the sum of its parts.  All too often a great play is given a poorer production, or great performances are wasted on a lesser play.

 

At the Beck Center for the Arts, a powerful and startling story has been paired with magnificent storytelling, resulting in a "Next to Normal" worthy of the original's Pulitzer Prize and Tony Awards, while serving up something special of its own design and on its own terms.       

 

"Next to Normal" is a portrait of a contemporary American family crippled by mental illness.  It offers a vivid depiction of a manic-depressive, delusional woman-Diana Goodman-and demonstrates how her disease infiltrates, infects and isolates members of her family.  It also hurls harsh criticism at a medical community that treats this disease by throwing pharmaceuticals at a wall to see which ones stick. 

 

As musicals go, this is a tough one to watch.  It is not escapist fare, nor does it merely aspire to scratch the surface of heartache and offer songs about suffering with a security net.  Brian Yorkey's powerful lyrics expose raw nerves to arctic air while Tom Kitt's pulsating rock-operatic score serves as a centrifuge to work emotion to the surface and suspend it there. Little dialogue is offered so as not to disrupt the music's momentum and impact. 

 

Director Vicky Bussert adds muscle mass to this frame by taking a few creative risks along the way.  

 

For starters, this telling of "Next to Normal" is made all the more personal by presenting it in the intimate space of Beck's small black box theater rather than its main stage.  Gone is the physical distance between player and patron, so gone is the psychological distance as well.  The brilliant six-piece string-heavy band, under Nancy Maiser's direction, is also on stage and this, too, adds to the intimacy of the storytelling. We are never far removed from the soundtrack of these characters' troubled minds for the duration of the play.

 

Bussert also adds physicality to this production.  Her characters are in a constant state of motion as they try to catch up to or escape from one another, with Diana merely attempting to catch up to herself.  This makes the moments of stillness-when they find, touch and hold one another, as they do in the closing "I Am The One" and "Light" numbers-all the more poignant. 

 

All this movement is facilitated by Jeff Hermann's set design of multi-tier stairs and platforms, which includes a back-lit wall to which all the bottles of pharmaceuticals have apparently stuck.   

 

Less risky, but a creative choice nonetheless, is Bussert's bringing on board an entire cast with Baldwin Wallace University affiliation.  

 

The Music Theatre program at BW, of which Bussert is Director, is one of the nation's top repositories for young, talented performers, so it is not surprising that graduating senior Chris McCarrell is flat-out brilliant in this production.  McCarrell, as son Gab, delivers flawless harmonies and commanding lead vocals with astounding presence and, as both angel and devil to his mother, has opted to emphasize the later with startling results.  His "I'm Alive" is breathtaking.  Everything he does is.

 

Less successful in nailing down definitive characters, but just as strong and secure vocally, are Caroline Murrah as Diana's damaged daughter Natalie and Ellis Dawson as Natalie's stoner boyfriend Henry.  College freshmen both, they lack the experience, though not the potential, to tap their characters' respective demons and put them on display.

 

Such is not the case with the wonderful Katherine DeBoer as Diana and Scott Plate as her husband, Dan.  Both capture the extreme highs and lows that dominate their characters' lives, and do so with the kind of conviction and verve that holds audience's captive.  There are moments during their performances-her "You Don't Know" and his "I've Been," for example-when one fears to blink so as not to risk missing a single moment.  

 

Phil Carroll turns in a solid performance as Diana's array of doctors, nicely facilitating the frustration generated by the feckless medical community.

 

"Next to Normal" is serious stuff set to music and this Beck Center production of it is brilliant.  Be warned that the person you hear fighting back tears throughout the performance is you.  

 

"Next to Normal" continues through April 21 at the Beck Center for the Arts in Lakewood.  For tickets, which range from $17 to $28, call 216-521-2540 x10 or visit www.beckcenter.org.
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