If your family has mental illness sprayed all over your genetic code as if a fire hose let loose with boiling hot super glue, I’ll see you at the support group meetings. If not, watching Theatre Harrisburg’s rock opera “Next to Normal” will provide you a wonderfully compassionate empathy tool.
Directed by Dave Olmsted, with Music Director Mitchell Sensenig-Wilshire, (music by Tom Kitt and book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey), the Tony- and Pulitzer-winning “Next to Normal” presents mental illness as a heartbreaking family disease with tentacles that reach out and choke you well beyond the family boundaries. Like second-hand smoke in your house, mental illness affects all when it affects one.
In this tense drama, we meet the Goodman family, whose dynamics revolve on a tenuous axis around mother Diana’s (Christine Beutel) debilitating bipolar disorder, like running on a hamster wheel made of razor wire. Her highs fly higher than mountains, but her lows sink lower than the largest boulders in those same mountains’ valleys.
Simple, mundane tasks elude her: making sandwiches, driving a car or writing her daughter Natalie’s (Melody Carsey) piano recital on the family calendar. Husband/father Dan (Brian Fosnacht) cleans every literal and figurative mess to try to cobble his family back together, like the scratchy twine that chafes and unravels a little every time you try to tie a package. And then there’s Gabe (Ryan Smetzer), the older brother whose shadow Natalie lives underneath. Just outside the family is Natalie’s boyfriend, Henry, (Moses Handy), and psychiatrists Doctors Fine and Madden (Brian Silva), where the tentacles unfortunately reach.
The family drama unfolds through an exciting rock score with the entire cast showcased as strong lyricists who deliver performances raw and revealing, powerful and dark. A surprising five out of six cast members are making their Theatre Harrisburg debut, and that fact missed me until I read the program after the curtain fell. Their dynamics with each other contain that guarded, distant quality that develops so prevalently in dysfunctional families.
If you have a neuro-typical brain and you’re a little Type A (my, ahem, “friend” has this problem), and you’re trying to use the program to follow along with the music, take a beat. The songs are all there, just not in the right order. Taking a deep breath will help. Better yet, use those empathy muscles to step inside the scattered mind of a mentally ill person. How difficult it must be for them to follow along when their brains play tricks on them, when they’re confused, when they can’t seem to tune their inner radios to the same channel or frequency everyone else is listening to.
The above paragraph is my disclaimer, because… in my own program, which I notated in the dark, I mislabeled most of the standout songs that really sang to me. And I didn’t figure it out until the middle of Act 2. My brain-muddled confusion should not subtract from the satisfying quality of the play’s music. The entire score is relentlessly driven with angry, anthem rock songs that teenaged Gina would have cranked the volume to 10 on her fabric speakers, just after slamming her door shut and calling her mother an expletive. As the more refined (more, ahem, mature?) Gina, I now just tap my foot politely, with perhaps a minor chair dance wiggle if I forget myself. The uber-talented musicians produce such robust orchestration for a six-piece band, that I would have guessed they had 12, at least. They jammed with such high energy from opener to finale. So even if you aren’t clear where you are in the program, the arena rock musical style will rock you.
Although the mood of the play contains a notably weighted essence—the sort of gut-wrenching vignettes one doesn’t bounce back from easily, if ever—Theatre Harrisburg’s treatment of the subject matter includes partnerships with the Dauphin County chapter of NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness), as well as Cornerstone Coffeehouse. Ticket-holders can visit the NAMI table to gather reading materials and speak to one of their representatives. Cornerstone Coffeehouse is drawing awareness to mental health by offering a drink related to the show, with a donation going to NAMI for every cup purchased.
Alexandra Johnson, Theatre Harrisburg’s marketing and box office manager, said Theatre Harrisburg’s goal was “to handle such stigmatized and heavy subject matter in a caring and uplifting way.”
If you and your support group (over age 16, please) do attend a production, remember your tissues. Bring the big box. And as my personal PSA, if you are concerned about your own mental health or that of someone in your circle, please call the National Suicide Hotline at 988.
“Next to Normal” runs Jan. 26 to Feb. 11 at the Krevsky Center, 513 Hurlock St., Harrisburg. For more information on show times and tickets, visit www.theatreharrisburg.com/shows/next-to-normal.
