By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Diana Goodman is just a mother trying to take care of her family.
She has a “boring” husband, Dan, with whom she has perfunctory early morning sex. She tries to keep up with her ambitious daughter, Natalie. She worries about her son who shows up in the early morning hours. She shouldn’t worry, he tells her. She shouldn’t monitor the weather or watch the news.
But she does.
She tells her daughter to put her recital on the calendar. But the daughter who clearly doubts she’ll show up, tells her the calendar hasn’t been updated since April. It’s September.
“Happy Easter, then,” Diana responds.
Natalie is busy making lunch sandwiches for the next day. To keep ahead. She’s working in the floor.
Something is amiss.
This family is not normal.
The travails of the Goodmans are played out in the musical “Next to Normal” with book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey and music by Tom Kitt. The musical is being staged by the Perrysburg Musical Theatre Friday, Oct. 27 and Saturday, Oct. 28 at 7 p.m. and Sunday, Oct. 29 at 2 p.m. in the Juliet Beck Auditorium inside the Commodore Building, 140 E. Indiana Ave., Perrysburg. Click to purchase tickets.
Directed by Julie Zatco, the six-person cast explores in wall-to-wall rock anthems and ballads Diana’s struggles and the toll they take on the family.
Diana’s (Jess Mullins) psychosis was triggered her baby son’s death. That was 16 years ago, and he lives as a vision in her head since, developing all the time. Now Gabe (Kurt Elfering) is 17 just a couple years older than his sister Natalie (Cayla Slattery).
She’s a striver who among her talents is a pianist. She sings in “Everything Else” how the Mozart sonata she’s preparing for the recital has all the order that her home life doesn’t.
But fellow student Henry (Alex Evans) who barges in as she’s practicing, isn’t impressed. He plays in jazz band and touts the freedom of jazz, and they end up jamming on Mozart. He has more than music on his mind, and a romance blossoms between him and the reluctant Natalie.
Dan (Anthony Covatta) is clearly at a loss. He still views himself as the husband who built this home in the woods for his family and wants the relationships inside to be as perfect as the architecture. (He and Diana met while they were in college studying architecture. The script is structured on this kind of understated narrative scaffolding.)
Dan sings of his belief in being faithful, and yet I wonder: Is his devotion to this vision of himself as much as it is to his wife? When trying to help Diana, he’s always competing with Gabe’s voice who convinces her to throw away her medication, a literally dizzying cocktail of psychotherapeutic medications.
Enter the new “rock star” doctor (John Slattery plays both physicians). He tries talk therapy and hypnosis, and when those fail, to Electroconvulsive Therapy.
Still Gabe looms over, an increasingly wraith-like figure, always afraid that his mother will abandon him – a project of Diana’s fear of losing him.
Her internal state is finely detailed and made more powerful because it is sung. Patches of dialogue link the songs that carry the narrative weight.
The cast all have strong voices, and enunciate clearly, elucidating every turn and nuance, making them register in way words alone never could.
The writing is unrelenting and unsentimental. When Dan and Diana recall the night Gabe died, the physical and emotional details paint a wrenching scene of two people, still kids themselves in a way, dealing with the unbearable.
The play proffers no easy answers but does offer hope.
In the end the audience is left with a six-part resonant chord. It’s a heavenly lift after two hours that at times plunge the audience into an emotional hellscape.
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PMT is partnering with the Monarch Grief Center during this production. Monarch representatives will be on hand at the performances, and PMT will be accepting donations to the Monarch.
