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Review: Next to Normal
With some trepidation I listened to last year's big Broadway hit, Next to Normal, a musical about a family living with mental illness. It won three Tonys and the Pulitzer, but the trepidation proved to be totally accurate, and I definitely don't recommend this heap of fail to anyone. (Spoiler alert: treatment is something that evil family members force upon the crazy in order to quash their special spark and repress them into dull normality.)
I... just don't know where to begin. The fact that Diana is supposedly bipolar when her primary symptom is seeing and interacting with her dead son? The parade of treatment option after treatment option that makes things worse and worse for her, culminating in electroshock therapy that wipes her memory? The fact that the play's conclusion is that the "break" is "not in [her] brain, not in [her] blood, but in [her] soul"? And what about the overwhelming power differential between the men and the women in the show?
The fundamental power struggle in the show is between three men: Dan, Diana's husband; Dr. Fine, Diana's psychiatrist; and Gabe, Diana's hallucinatory (or is he?) son. From almost the first scene Diana is just a doll that they tug back and forth between them, with Dan and Dr. Fine fighting to medicate her to dullness and Gabe fighting to keep her untreated so that she will pay attention to him. Diana is never given a chance to make any choices for herself, and even she recognizes what a horrible trope she is--the song she sings as she's being wheeled into electroshock therapy is "Didn't I See This Movie?" I've certainly seen this movie more times than I care to count, thanks, and I feel no need to listen to it again.
The one thing that the play represents really well is the experience of the family member just outside the immediate struggle. Natalie, Diana's daughter, is just pitch-perfect and heart-breaking. I acquired the album on the basis of Natalie's song "Superboy and the Invisible Girl" about her relationship with her dead brother and the relative value her parents place on them. And her song "Everything Else", about subsuming her doubts and fears into playing the piano, is just incredible. I weep for the fact that I don't live in the world that contains the rest of the *actually good* show that "Everything Else" seems to have come from. (Youtube link)
In conclusion, avoid this musical. Except for "Everything Else", which totally rocks.
I... just don't know where to begin. The fact that Diana is supposedly bipolar when her primary symptom is seeing and interacting with her dead son? The parade of treatment option after treatment option that makes things worse and worse for her, culminating in electroshock therapy that wipes her memory? The fact that the play's conclusion is that the "break" is "not in [her] brain, not in [her] blood, but in [her] soul"? And what about the overwhelming power differential between the men and the women in the show?
The fundamental power struggle in the show is between three men: Dan, Diana's husband; Dr. Fine, Diana's psychiatrist; and Gabe, Diana's hallucinatory (or is he?) son. From almost the first scene Diana is just a doll that they tug back and forth between them, with Dan and Dr. Fine fighting to medicate her to dullness and Gabe fighting to keep her untreated so that she will pay attention to him. Diana is never given a chance to make any choices for herself, and even she recognizes what a horrible trope she is--the song she sings as she's being wheeled into electroshock therapy is "Didn't I See This Movie?" I've certainly seen this movie more times than I care to count, thanks, and I feel no need to listen to it again.
The one thing that the play represents really well is the experience of the family member just outside the immediate struggle. Natalie, Diana's daughter, is just pitch-perfect and heart-breaking. I acquired the album on the basis of Natalie's song "Superboy and the Invisible Girl" about her relationship with her dead brother and the relative value her parents place on them. And her song "Everything Else", about subsuming her doubts and fears into playing the piano, is just incredible. I weep for the fact that I don't live in the world that contains the rest of the *actually good* show that "Everything Else" seems to have come from. (Youtube link)
In conclusion, avoid this musical. Except for "Everything Else", which totally rocks.