Next to Normal; a musical voyage into the depths of a tortured soul!
Photo of the Cast, from the Royal Ottawa Hospital site.
Diana, a mother suffering from depression and PTSD, is portrayed by singer/actress Skye MacDiarmid who immersed herself in this difficult role with passion, and total conviction, revealing her strong voice and enormous acting skills from the very first moments. This immediate burst of talent creates a break between the sadness of the content and the uplifting form of the performance and it gives us strength to continue watching, after all the subject matter is not easy. Fifteen years after the death of her 8 month old son, Diana remains traumatized by the event and never seems to have recovered. On the contrary, theC. Lee Bates staging and the music, directed by Paul Legault, fore ground the hallucinatory presence of this “dead” son floating around the stage singing “I’m alive” , taunting the still grieving mother who cannot get the image of this young man out of her head as he clings to her memories and won’t permit her to let go of this past that is tearing her apart. That is the narrative essence of this Tony Award winning performance Next to Normal, now playing at the Gladstone until Saturday the 18th.
This is an amazing evening for many reasons. The production is extremely good. The six characters – a mother, a father , a daughter (Nathalie) , the deceased son Gabe and Henry the persistent young man who is in love with Nathalie , as well as the doctor / pharmacologist, are set up in this microcosm of family dysfunction. The book is clearly the result of precise research on depression and other forms of affective disorders that emerge in this story as it shows us how, little by little, the mother loses contact with reality, plunges into hallucinations, nightmares, dumps her pills in the toilet to avoid being turned into a robot with no feeling and is finally subjected to shock therapy after many attempts at treatment. The book captures, with surprising realism, the actual internal experiences of this woman living through her nightmare. The daily struggle to survive within oneself is also associated with the way the family members try to cope, in their own way, as they each find themselves slipping away, losing control of their own lives. . The portrait was disturbing, and at time difficult to watch, precisely because it was so close to the truth.
However, of great importance was the intervention of the music and the singing. They rose above the book because the variety of musical styles and rhythms, central to the show, the “expressionist”, the jazz and even the atonal experiences, created by the composer, spoke to the tortured “soul” and less to the intellect of these individuals, capturing the deepest feelings, the deepest hurt, the deepest turmoil that was so clearly tearing them apart. . In that sense, the music followed the interpretations and brought a new level of feeling to the twisted world of this family as the mother’s hallucinations materialize on stage, and the daughter’s trouble creates, or so it seems, a perfect mate who will lift her out of her suffering and help her survive. The boyfriend Henry is no doubt real, but at moments, whether he is or not, makes little difference. His influence is there and it is quite wonderful for the daughter. As for the husband, the question resolves itself in a different way.
The scenes at the hospital and other moments of heightened anguish might have been reflected even more closely by the staging, the set and lighting, to make the performance space come alive to a greater extent. But the overall impression was a sense that this show captured the inner world of the whole family as well as the the mothers tortured conscience. Thus, it was a form of total theatre where all levels of creativity intervene to bring the audience to a deep understanding of what it was to live in this world disconnected from reality.
Whether this show should be seen by people who suffer from such mental issues is another question. It depends on the relative stability of the individual and only the family can make that decision. However, the fact that Indie Women Productions has undertaken such an initiative must be given the highest praise. This is an extremely important event that brings these questions out in the open with no embarrassment, no sense of discomfort. This is how it is! The anger, the confusion, the hurt, the helplessness, the guilt, the sadness, all these emotions are legitimate and human and must not remain unspoken. Bravo to the production team, bravo to the founding committee of Indie Women Productions – to C. Lee Bates, Joan Edwards Frommer and more recently to Lin Dickson and Laurel Tye for their extraordinary initiative to produce socially relevant theatre of an excellent quality. Their work is on the right track!!
Next to Normal, music by Tom Kitts, book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey, directed by C. Lee Bates. Musical direction by Paul Legault, Choreography by Lynne Fleury.
An Indie Women Productions.
Plays at The Gladstone until October 18, 2014.
CAST
Diana Skye MacDiarmid
Gabe Patrick Teed
Dan Terry Duncan
Natalie Justice Tremblay
Dr Fine etc Drake Ross Evans
Henry Aidan Shenkman