Next to Normal – Broadway musical at the PAC

By Yashowanto Ghosh, Aquinas Reporter

The Aquinas College Theatre Program presented four performances of the rock musical Next to Normal at the Performing Arts Center during Thursday, Feb. 20, to Sunday, Feb. 23, for its third show of the season.

The opening show—on a school night, no less—already had 69 advance bookings, according to sophomore Atlan Lasher, who was working at the box office that evening. The enthusiastic reception must have been due to both AQ Theatre’s substantial record of high-quality shows and the musical’s own history: The show, with a libretto by Brian Yorkey and a score by Tom Kitt, opened Off-Broadway in 2008 and on Broadway in 2009; it won three Tony Awards in 2009 and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2010.

The show, which happens to fit in nicely with mental health theme of the current season of the Contemporary Writers Series, was selected and directed by AQ Theatre professor Scott Harman. It centers around homemaker and grieving mother Diana, a complex role for which broadway star Alice Ripley won a Tony for Best Actress in a Musical in 2009; the protagonist is played in Aquinas’ production by junior Gabrielle Lee, who also played Emma in Lizzie: The Musical a year ago, as well as Frances in These Shining Lives last semester.

Diana—and the audience—can see her dead son Gabe, who died in infancy years ago, but he has, over the years, grown up into a young man in her mind. Gabe is played by Jonas Grummet, a freshman at Grand Rapids Community College. The grieving father, Dan, is played by sophomore Henry Vredevelt; the other member of the family is daughter Natalie, born after Gabe’s death, played by sophomore Mary Kampe. Both Kampe and Vredevelt also performed in the Opera and Musical Theatre Concert in the Kretschmer Recital Hall of the Art and Music Center last semester. Natalie’s high school boyfriend, Henry, is played by Santiago Meija from GRCC. The plot follows Diana’s treatment, first in the care of Dr. Fine, then in the care of Dr. Madden, with both of the professionals being played by freshman Ashlyn Armock. Armock also played two different roles in Twelfth Night last semester; the roles of the two doctors in the current show were, in fact, also played as a double role in the Off-Broadway and Broadway productions of Next to Normal.

Diana (Gabrielle Lee) receiving electroconvulsive (shock) therapy – Photo by AQ Theatre

Diana’s treatment appears to trace, in three broad strokes, the history of mental health care, but backward: She receives medication from Dr. Fine at the beginning of the show; then she flushes her pills down the toilet, and starts receiving hypnotherapy from Dr. Madden; and then, after the crisis heightens, Dr. Madden administers electrical shocks. The shock therapy draws an explicit allusion, in a number sung by Diana herself, to the classic One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but it is easy to also draw connections to other classics, such as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

The set is one of AQ Theatre’s most elaborate in recent memory, featuring the family’s house—the parents’ bedroom (with an actual bed) and Natalie’s room (with a desk and chair) up a flight of stairs, a bathroom with a sink and a toilet (so we actually see Diana flush her pills) in front of the parents’ bedroom, and a kitchen downstage; other scenes, such as the doctors’ offices or a room in Natalie and Henry’s high school, are rolled in and out through the vomitoria. The show ran two hours and fifteen minutes, and even included an intermission.

The plot forces those two-plus hours to be filled with dark content; the writing folds in plenty of dark humor to help it stand. Still, the show had a note on the doors with several trigger warnings: adult language, mental illness and treatment thereof, suicidal thoughts, and death of a child.

The season’s third show has been a musical for at least a couple of seasons now, with Lizzie last spring and Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 the spring before, setting up something of a tradition. The current season will end with a production of Sara Ruhl’s Eurydice, which will play during Thursday, April 10 to Sunday, April 13. Aquinas College shares the PAC with Circle Theatre and the League of Catholic High Schools; Circle Theatre’s season features six shows from May to September. It opens with a children’s musical, Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!, which will play during April 30 to May 4, just in time to de-stress before finals week.