‘Next to Normal’ cast is strong, engaging
“Next to Normal” is a 2008 rock musical by Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt that won a slew of awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2010.
The play tells the story of Diana Goodman, a woman coping with bipolar disease and its affect on her family, especially her high school age daughter Natalie.
Desert Rose artistic director Michael Montroy, the director of the piece, has a dynamite cast to tell this emotionally gripping story, but unfortunately shortly before opening they lost the actor playing Dan, Diana’s husband, to illness and he won’t be rejoining the rest of the cast as the run continues. The actor who stepped in was not prepared or even right for the part. He had the book in hand when I saw the show, which is fine, but I don’t think he will settle into the part as the run continues. I hope I am wrong. Despite this rather serious problem, the rest of the cast is so strong and so engaging, and the writing and music so powerful, that I am still inclined to recommend the show.
Particularly good are the women — the emotional center of the story — Karen Byers as Diana and Clara Lambert as Natalie. Bryan Durden is also excellent as Natalie’s boyfriend Henry.
It is not easy to play a chronically depressed and alternately manic person who is also highly medicated, but Byers is wonderful in the role, completely believable in her fierce struggle. She is also a fabulous vocalist, and her balancing the character’s emotional volatility while singing complicated vocal parts is astonishing. Her rendition of “I Miss the Mountains” was an especially high point of the show.
The heart of the story is the relationship between Diana and her daughter, and Lambert is excellent as the talented daughter suffering from the neglect of her ill mother. An overachiever and gifted pianist, she gets involved with a pot smoking charmer named Henry who tells her “classical music is too rigid, you have to play the notes on the page.” This bit of advice has an unfortunately adverse effect on her piano recital, and she eventually gets addicted to pills like her mother. This unpromising love affair blossoms into something special, though, with all its ups and downs, and is an integral and touching part of the story the playwrights are telling.
Christopher Chase is good, as usual, as a number of disparate medical professionals, including a doctor of psychopharmacology, an electroconvulsive therapist, and a psychotherapist that Diana hallucinates as a Gene Simmons lookalike rock star, and wants to go to bed with. Cash Martinez also gives a graceful performance as the spectral Gabe.
You go to a Desert Rose show for the talented performers, not for elaborate set design, and the lack of set is compensated for by some interesting choreography, especially that executed by Lambert. The costumes are interesting, varied, and colorful.
This is a heartfelt and emotionally riveting story of mental illness, drug addiction, and family dysfunction; not the usual stuff of Broadway musicals, and it’s all the more compelling for that.
“Next to Normal” is playing through Sept. 1 at Desert Rose Playhouse, 6921 Montgomery NE. Go to desertroseplayhouse. net or call 563-0316 for reservations.