Inside Next to Normal

8/10/2019 Inside Next to Normal

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inside NEXT TO NORMAL background and analysis by Scott Miller

Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitts Next to Normal was surely the most adult, most mature rock musical to hit Broadway in decades, anunrelentingly intense, brutally honest story about a bipolar woman undergoing electroshock therapy, about the impact of her illness on herfamily, and about the shortcomings of the medical professions understanding of mental illness. But this score wasnt Broadwa y pop; thiswas hard driving rock and roll, authentic enough to match the authenticity of its emotion. It was only the second rock musical to win aPulitzer Prize for drama, alongside Rent .

Why is Next to Normal so powerful? Because we humans are emotional adventurers. The thing that makes a good story a good musical isemotion. And the thing that makes a production of a musical really wonderful and powerful is the honesty and authenticity of its emotions.Thats one of the musical theatres top priorities second only perhaps to clear storytelling.

People come to see a musical specifically because its a more emotional kind of storytelling (whether or not they consciously realize that),so if a production delivers phony emotions, the producers are committing fraud as surely as someone selling glass diamonds. When youngwriters wonder if a story is worth adapting for the musical stage, the answer is about whether or not the story is primarily an emotional one.Because its language is music, emotion is the lingua franca of musical theatre. If a story is primarily about action, songs might well get inthe way which is why there are very few successful musical farces or musical mysteries, because those forms are about intricate plott ing,not emotion.

A lot of older musicals follow a similar arc we watch as the Hero tries to assimilate into a community, and a "happy ending" is one inwhich the Hero succeeds in that assimilation, like in The Music Man, Annie Get Your Gun, Oklahoma!, or Brigadoon . In more seriousmusicals, the Hero often is unable to assimilate, so he has to be removed, sometimes by death, like in Sweeney Todd or Carousel . In SouthPacific there are two Heroes (Cable and Nellie), so we get both outcomes. You might argue the same thing about The King and I and Manof La Mancha .

But in order to have a community to assimilate into, a musical needs a big chorus. And starting in the mid-1960s, choruses startingshrinking on Broadway, mostly for economic reasons. By the 70s, the leads became the chorus, as in Company and A Chorus Line . And ifyou dont re ally have a "community" onstage, that assimilation story loses its power. ( Bat Boy sort of mocked that problem by creating acommunity of a couple dozen characters, but all played by five actors.)

For that reason and also because of the philosophical underpinnings of the 1960s counter-culture musicals began to turn to a differentkind of story, the classic Hero Myth, in which our Hero starts out on a journey (sometimes concrete, sometimes psychological) , meets a"wise wizard," finds his "magic amulet" (ruby slippers, light saber), picks up companions, navigates various obstacles (sometimes includinga trip into "the underworld"), does battle with an "evil wizard," and finally gains new wisdom, often returning home to share it with hiscommunity. Its an incredibly powerful form because the Hero Myth is just a stand-in for a human life. We each have our own life journey,full of wise and evil wizards, companions, and magic amulets; so we connect to that story form in a really powerful, personal way.

The Hero Myth has become progressively more relevant in American culture because more people are living alone today than at any othertime in human history mostly just because we can, thanks to various technological and economic developments. The book Going Solo:The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone is about that trend. The assimilation story, once very powerful to a nation ofimmigrants in twentieth century America, has given way to the Hero Myth, as modern society allows us more time to look inward.

Think about how many contemporary musicals follow the Hero Myth model Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, American Idiot (timesthree!), Shrek, Billy Elliot, Passing Strange, Cry-Baby, High Fidelity, Spring Awakening, Taboo , and lots of others. This trend started in the70s, with Company, Pippin, Follies, Jesus Christ Superstar , then later in the 80s with Nine and Sunday in the Park with George , amongothers. But it really exploded in the early 1990s, when musical theatre started to decouple its elf artistically from New York commercialtheatre on and off Broadway.

Because these new American musicals were being written with less thought to commercial potential, often with no aim toward Broadway,they were much more personal works, which generally steered them toward the form of the Hero Myth. In Next to Normal , Dianas arc

follows a classic Hero Myth structure, even as far as a journey to the "underworld," in the form of the ECT and her memory loss. As BrunoBettelheim writes in The Uses of Enchantment (the book that inspired Into the Woods ), "Since ancient times the near-impenetrable forest in


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which we get lost has symbolized the dark, hidden, near-impenetrable world of our unconscious. If we have lost the framework which gavestructure to our past life and must now find our own way to become ourselves, and have entered the wilderness with an as yet undevelopedpersonality, when we succeed in finding our way out we shall emerge with a much more highly developed humanity." Yorkey and Kitt haveused this ancient device but removed its metaphoric cloak. Here, Diana literally journeys into her own unconscious.

Even more relevant to Next to Normal , Bettelheim also writes, "From the earliest versions, fairy tales [and Hero Myths] stress that both

desires reside in each of us, and that we cannot survive deprived of either: the wish to stay tied to the past, and the urge to reach out to anew future. Through the unfolding of events, the story most often teaches that entirely cutting oneself off from ones pas t leads to disaster,but that to exist only beholden to the past is stunting; while it is safe, it provides no life of ones own. Only the thoroug h integration of thesecontrary tendencies permits a successful existence."

ext to Normal is actually a double Hero Myth. Diana follows her Hero Myth and Natalie follows a secondary Hero Myth; and key toNatalies character is that the two journeys are very similar. Natalies awareness of that is what creates her fear that she will live a life asfucked up and da maged as Dianas, that her relationship with Henry will be as scarred and empty as her parents.

Diana is also aware of these parallels, and of Natalies fear of these parallels. At the beginning of "I Miss the Mountains," Diana sings:

There was a time when I flew higher,

Was a time the wild girl running freeWould be me. Now I see her feel the fire, Now I know she needs me thereTo share.

Im nowhere. All these blank and tranquil years,Seems theyve dried up all my tears.

And while she runs free and fast,Seems my wild days are past.

Thats quite a jam - packed lyric. Its about Diana missing her manic past, worrying that Natalie will suffer the same fate, her shame forfailing as a mother, her inability to feel anything because of her meds, and even a tinge of jealousy of Natalies youth and freedom. Despitethe abundance of rhyme here, the language and sentence structure are completely natural, and the self-awareness Diana expresses moves hercharacter forward and propels her to action. But beneath tha t, theres such extraordinary lyric -writing craft here. There are wonderful,almost hidden interior rhymes, like blank and the first part of tranquil , a trick Yorkey uses throughout the score. And theres also a ton ofalliteration the ws in the first t hree lines and the last two lines, the f s in the fourth and tenth lines, and the n sounds in lines 4-7,particularly in the fifth line.

This intro works as important self-awareness for Diana, but it also makes sure the audience recognizes these two parallel journeys. Justas Oklahoma! sets up a secondary love triangle to mirror the primary love triangle, here bookwriter and lyricist Brian Yorkey and composerTom Kitt do the same thing with the Hero Myth. But its a messy, chaotic Hero Myth, as befitting Dianas state of mind. Could Gabe beboth magic amulet and evil wizard... and companion...? Could Dr. Madden be both wise wizard and evil wizard?

The one advantage Natalie has in her Hero Myth is self-awareness. While Diana is desperately trying to understand herself and her journey,

Natalie is very clear-eyed, though maybe a touch too pessimistic. To Natalie, each disaster for Diana is a future disaster for Natalie. Whilethe end of Dianas story is totally ambiguous especially as we see at the end that her journey has been mirrored by a hidden journey Danhas also taken the end of Natalies story is more hopeful. Its still ambiguous, because lets face it, life is ambiguous...

The one significant difference between Dianas and Natalies stories is in their partners. In Hero Myth terms, Dan fails as Dianas faithfulcompanion, while Henry succeeds as Natalies. It seems that Dan may not have known about Dianas problems when he married her , and tosome extent he was "forced" into the marriage, if only by his own sense of duty and decency and whatnot. After all, Dan sees himself as themartyred Good Guy (which may be his great tragic flaw). On the other hand, Henry does seem to know exactly how damaged Natalie is,and he chooses to be with her, without any external pressures, with his eyes fully open. Natalie and Henry have a much more honestrelationship than Diana and Dan do, and so the younger couple will probably have a healthier relationship.

Of course, its not important that an audience consciously rec ognize all this stuff. The Hero Myth works because we instinctively recognizethe elements of the story, even if only subconsciously, as elements of our own lives. As Ben Kingsley once said about actors, "The tribe haselected you to tell its story. You ar e the shaman/healer, thats what the storyteller is, and I think its important for actors to appreciate that.


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Too often actors think its all about them, when in reality its all about the audience being able to recognize themselves in you."

We are all emotional adventurers.

Giving Birth

Like many shows today, Next to Normal had an unusually long, rocky road to Broadway. In an age of skyrocketing ticket prices and moreand more non-English-speaking tourists in the audience, Broadway producers are rarely eager to take on a brand new show, especially onedealing with a topic as harrowing as mental illness. The show began its life in 1998 as a ten-minute workshop sketch called FeelingElectric . Writer Brian Yorkey had brought the idea to composer Tom Kitt ( High Fidelity ) while both were at the BMI Lehman EngelMusical Theatre Workshop, and Kitt wrote a rock score for the piece. Both Yorkey and Kitt moved on to other projects, but they keptreturning to their ten-minute piece, eventually expanding it to a full-length musical. This version went through several workshops as theteam kept working on it. In September 2005, an abbreviated version of the full -length piece was part of the New York Musical TheatreFestival, where it attracted some positive attention. Second Stage Theatre in New York workshopped the piece in 2006 and 2007, featuringfor the first time the woman who would give the brilliant, startling, visceral performance at the heart of the story, Alice Ripley, and withdirector Michael Greif ( Rent, Jane Eyre, Grey Gardens ) at the helm.

The show moved to off Broadway in 2008, now retitled Next to Normal where it ran barely a month. Still it won the Outer Critics Circle

Award for Outstanding Score, and it was nominated for two other Outer Critics Circle Awards (including Best New Off BroadwayMusical), three Lucille Lortel Awards, two Drama League Awards, and two Drama Desk Awards. The New York Times said, "As befitswhat is surely New Yorks first mainstream musical about manic depression, Next to Normal is apt to produce bipolar reactions in anyonewho sees it. How could it be otherwise with a show that suggests a hybrid of fractured-family soapers like Ordinary People and TheWhos Tommy, the 1969 rock opera of illness and noncomformity? To watch this ta le of a haunted housewife (beautifully played by AliceRipley) and the household she in turn haunts is to ride a speeding roller coaster of responses. One minute youre rolling you r eyes; the next,youre wiping them. When the show ends, youre probably doing both at the same time." New Yorks Daily News said the show "isaudacious, original and like its heroine has issues. . . In the end, the show is exactly like Diana always unpredictable, never fullybalanced. But if youre looking for something thatll shake you up, Next to Normal is just what the doctor ordered."

Perhaps it could have stayed that way, flawed but fascinating. That worked for Rent . But Yorkey and Kitt kept working, focusing like alaser on the emotions of the family, ultimately fashioning a score that was almost unbearably emotional. Yet another new version of theshow was then given a regional theatre production at the Arena Stage from November 2008 through January 2009. Greif returned asdirector. Ripley and most of the off-Broadwa y cast participated, but Brian dArcy James remained in New York to play the title characterin Shrek the Musical , and he was replaced in the role of Dan by J. Robert Spencer.

Finally, though no one might have expected it, the little six-actor rock musical that could began previews on Broadway in March 2009. Thistime, The New York Times said, "No show on Broadway right now makes as direct a grab for the heart or wrings it as thoroughly as Nextto Normal does. This brave, breathtaking musical focuses squarely on the pain that cripples the members of a suburban family, and neverfor a minute does it let you escape the anguish at the core of their lives. Next to Normal does not, in other words, qualify as your standardfeel-good musical. Instead this portrait of a manic-depressive mother and the people she loves and damages is something much more: a feel-everything musical, which asks you, with operatic force, to discover the liberation in knowing where it hurts. Such emotional rigor is a pointof honor for Next to Normal . . . With an astounding central performance from Alice Ripley as Diana Goodman, a housewife with bipolardisorder, this production assesses the losses that occur when wounded people are anesthetized and not just by the battery ofpharmaceutical and medical treatments to which Diana is subjected, but by recreational drugs, alcohol and that good old American virtue,denial with a smile." Rolling Stone called it "The best new musical of the season by a mile."

The first Broadway show to embrace social media, about six weeks into the Broadway run Next to Normal began publishing an adaptedversion of the show over Twitter. Over the course of a month, this serialized version of the show was "performed" 140 characters at a time,presented as if the characters themselves were tweeting about their day-to-day activities in real time. In between these tweets, the showwould periodically post a link to an audio file of a song from the show to move the story forward. This Twitter feed, designed to build acommunity around the show, eventually racked up more than a million followers. The Twitter "performance" culminated in a new songwritten by Kitt and Yorkey, based on suggestions from Twitter followers, who helped decide details about which characters are performingthe song, where it takes place in the story, as well as structure and lyric suggestions. The song was then publicly performed at a specialevent in New York. The producers also announced a "fan mashup" on YouTube, in which fans of the show recorded their owninterpretations of songs from the score.

The shows i nvestors recouped their initial investment of four million dollars a few days after its one year anniversary on Broadway,

proving that new, challenging work can occasionally succeed on Broadway, but also that it rarely originates there anymore. Late in the run,real-life married couple and Broadway veterans Marin Mazzie and Jason Danieley took over the two leads, while Alice Ripley went on tour


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with the show. The Broadway production closed in January 2011 after 754 performances.

Let It Shine

Tom Kitts musi c for Next to Normal is extraordinary. Its not just great pop/rock music driving pop anthems, muscular guitar rock,gorgeous ballads but structurally its very much an opera score, with arias, duets, quartets, sextets, recitative. The vocal arrangemen ts arespectacular. But beyond that, this is a bipolar score, following the Sondheim Rule, that Content Dictates Form. Music primarily bringsemotion to a story, and this story requires a special kind of emotion. So Kitt has expressed Dianas bipolar mood swings through his music.And not just Dianas. As much as they talk about Dianas mood, notice how erratic Dan is musically, from his weirdly manic "I ts GonnaBe Good," to the conflicting emotions and musical styles of Dans big solo, "Ive Been." An d notice the several musical fights in theshow; the darker the emotions get, the more rock and roll the music becomes. As he did with High Fidelity , Kitt does as much storytellinghere with his music as his collaborators do with words.

Kitt and Brian Yorkey have written musical dialogue scenes that both sound entirely naturalistic and also boast really economical, well-crafted lyrics with wonderful, original, surprising rhymes, including tons of interior rhymes, some almost hidden. Yorkeys l yrics are amongthe best ever written for the stage. Several times in each song, Yorkey reimagines a clich, turns a phrase, or left-turns a sentence in anunexpected way that keeps us engaged and provides important foreshadowing or the development of textual themes. And sometimes a darklaugh too.

Cause what doesnt kill me doesnt kill me, So fill meUp for just another day...

And theres this amazing alliteration in the same song:

In the hustle and the hurry,You want to wipe your worryClean away.

For just another day, I will keep the plates all spinningWith a smile so white and winning

All the way.

And notice that in those last three lines, Yorkeys sets of alteration overlap each other. We get the P s of keep, plates, , and spinning ; thenthe S s of spinning, smile , and so ; then the W s of with, white, winning, and way. And those W s link back to the W s of the previous three lines,and want, wipe, , worry , and away . The audience doesnt consciously recognize all this, but it works on them, creating energy, momentu m,in this context, maybe even a kind of frantic desperation.

This is really skillful, powerful writing. And beyond the remarkable craft here, these few lines tell us almost everything we need to knowabout this family, even if we dont consciously realize weve taken in all this information. Later on, we may think back to Dans desire to"wipe your worry...away" and realize how ironically it foreshadowed the dark choices he makes.

Following Sondheims rule that Content Dictates Form, Kitt and Yorkey have w ritten Next to Normal in a storytelling style that mirrors

Dianas world. The music itself, even without the lyrics, could not be set to any other story. Kitt uses the 7/8 time signatu re (essentiallydropping half a beat out of each measure of music) frequently throughout the score. He sometimes plays two key signatures against eachother. He almost always refuses to give numbers clear "buttons" at the end, which holds back the audience from the release of applause, andbuilds up the shows ever increasing tension. In many ways Kitts music works like a horror film score, and like Sweeney Todd , which wasconsciously built on the horror movie music of Bernard Herrmann ( Psycho, Vertigo ).

Dramatically, the score is just as extraordinary. It uses interior monologues for all the main characters, a device most people today think ofas a Rodgers and Hammerstein staple, but it really goes back to Shakespeare. Dianas "I Miss the Mountains" is a close cousin to Hamlets"To be or not to be" soliloquy. Both are deeply felt, desperately complicated, wrapped around metaphors, and focused on a choice to bemade. Dianas song has companion pieces in Dans soulful wail "Ive Been," Gabes defiant "Im Alive," and Natalies existent ial"Superboy and the Invisible Girl." In old-school musicals, they called these the "I Want" songs, though the device goes back a lot furtherthan Rodgers and Hammerstein or Cole Porter..

But Kitt and Yorkey are at their dramatic best in the fight scenes real, visceral, knock-down-drag-out fights . The double number, "You


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Dont Know" and "I Am the One" is just one example among many of a powerful book scene quite artfully set to music and rhymed lyrics.

The show is also very cinematic. Almost every scene dissolves into the next, sometimes even interrupting each other. Throughout the showthere are moments when an actor in one scene simply turns around and now hes in another scene, in another time and place. Th ere are oftentwo scenes going on onstage at once, juxtaposing the action in really interesting, revealing ways. As just one example of many, Nataliescrews up her piano recital on one side of the stage, while at the same time, Dianas telling her doctor about not being able to hold Natalie

as a baby. The two scenes slam up against each other in a powerful, emotional way, but only implying the connection that we in theaudience then complete, delivering more character and relationship information than a much longer dialogue scene could. And this happensthroughout the show, often in a cinematic split-screen effect.

ext to Normal is part of an evolution of the musical theatre. Many of the devices described above are also present in bare , PassingStrange, American Idiot , and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson . These new rock shows demand a very minimalist physical approach theresno time or place for traditional set changes and a less naturalistic, more fluid, more expressionistic, more cinematic kind of staging.Michael Bennett taught us in Dreamgirls how to use film devices on stage, close-ups, pans, focus pulls, dissolves, split- screens; and todaysaudience accept those devices on stage as easily as they accept them on the screen.

No one today goes to a musical expecting the old Rodgers and Hammerstein faux naturalism.

ext to Normal lives in a metaphorical world as much as in the physical world. Many of the devices Yorkey and Kitt use are designed tokeep the audience off kilter, to disorient them, to hold them in suspense, to not allow them time to think about and judge th e things theyr ewitnessing, to force them to experience these events rather than thinking about them. The audience is on this roller coaster ride with Diana,strapped in right beside her.

And that ties into the central point of the story, that a persons illness affects not just them, but everyone in their orbit. And because of theway Kitt and Yorkey have told this story, we the audience are among those in Dianas orbit. We have to live in her illness, h er delusions,her twisted world, with her for two hours. When she sees the doctor as a metal rocker, we see that too. When she finds herself inside adelusion, were there with her. That both binds the audience to Diana and gives them a more profound empathy than lesser writ ers mighthave allowed.

A Light in the Dark

ext to Normal is very surrealistic, maybe even more so than the original production suggests. The storys narrative is so fractured,sometimes linear, but often detouring into fantasy, delusion, flashback, lots of time telescoping. Following the Sondheim rule, Kitt andYorkey have written a show as fragmented and deconstructed as Dianas world, their intention to make the audience understand Diana smental state by making them literally experience her broken perception of reality.

One of the shows central poi nts, an existential view that it shares with Passing Strange , is that everyone has his own road and his owndestination or as Passing Strange puts it, his own Real. You cant follow someone elses path, because their Real is different from yourReal. Dia na has to find her path, but throughout much of the show, everyone else is telling her what that path should be. Its only at the endwhen she takes control of her own life, that we think she may find her Real. Of course, like Company , the end of Next to Normal isambiguous. Diana is taking action, but we have no idea what the results of that action will be. Will she be better? Worse? Those answersarent the point of this story. The point is that Diana finds her path. Just like Bobby in Company .

This is a complicated, adult story. Its not adult because the characters say fuck a lot, but because this is a story about things usually onlyadults experience a disintegrating marriage, regret, emotional scars, weariness, big existential questions... Next to Normal is endlessly richand complex and also brutally honest. Despite what the shallow types will tell you, audiences dont go to the theatre (or mov ies) for escape;we go for connection . To make sense of the world around us and our own lives, to be reminded that we all go through essentially the sametrials, that we are not alone . We dont all have bipolar disorder, but we do all deal, in one way or another, with the same challenges andquestions Diana faces.

Its the same reason humans told stories around the camp fires in our earliest days. As the show reminds us,

Day after day...Well find the will To find our way,

Knowing that the darkest skiesWill someday see the sun.When our long night is done,


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There will be light.

Sondheim says the point of art is to make order out of the chaos of our world. Art selects from life, focuses, juxtaposes, reveals, magnifies,all in the service of telling a meaningful story that helps us navigate the rough terrain of being human in the 21st century. You dont have tobe bipolar to see your own daily struggles in Dianas more extreme struggles. And thats why storytelling is important to the cu lture. Andwhy we need theatre. And why people find Next to Normal so genuinely powerful and incisive.

You Find Some Way to Survive

The "agent of chaos" is a common storytelling device, and these characters are often the misfits. In Next to Normal , Diana is a misfit, butonly psychologically. On the outside, shes an average suburban wife and mother, and yet on the inside she is brok en. And that brokennessmakes it very hard impossible? for her to fit in the world. In Act II, as the family surveys old photos, we catch references to multipleembarrassing incidents in Dianas past. This has been going on a long time. But in Dianas case, shes not an agent of chaos because she isId run wild, as with many agents of chaos, but because Ego and Superego are largely dysfunctional. She is an unwilling, "accidental" agentof chaos.

In an interview with the Next to Normal creative team, composer Tom Kitt, lyricist and bookwriter Brian Yorkey, director Michael Greif,and producer David Stone, the team talked about how the show was originally called Feeling Electric , partly because the original impetus

for writing the show was the issue of ETC (shock therapy), and partly because the show originally had a snarkier, more smartass tone. Butone of the lessons the writing team learned as they developed the show over several years, was that they had to write about a person, not anidea. As they rewr ote the show, it became more personal and more sincere. In its earlier versions, it was about ETC. Now its about awoman and her family grappling with mental illness. Big difference. And the new title, apparently chosen more by gut instinct than byreason, reflected this new tone. Interestingly, they chose this title before the title song had been written, so they built that song around theirnew title.

"Next to Normal" is an unusual phrase that grabs your attention, and though were all so used to it now, if you think about it even for asecond, you see that it packs a lot of meaning. In most shows, the misfit doesnt end up fitting comfortably into the communi ty. Once amisfit, always a misfit. (Two exceptions are Harold Hill and Maria Von Trapp, although you might argue that Meredith Willsons RiverCity is a whole town full of misfits.) So in Next to Normal , instead of taking Diana on a journey from misfit to normal, the writers gave her amore modest, more honest, more nuanced goal, of finding a place next to normal. In the shows finale, Diana sings:

You find some way to survive, And you find out you dont have to be happy at all To be happy youre alive.

This is not a Rodgers and Hammerstein bromide like "Youll never walk alone." This is real life. H ere, Diana chooses to walk alone. Andnotice that Dianas lyric is in the second person you find some way to survive as a reminder that this is not just her journey, but all ourourneys. This song is sort of a companion piece to the equally ambiguous "Being Alive" in Sondheims Company . There is no happy

ending here because there are no happy endings in real life; theres always a next chapter (so we all learned from Into the Woods ). Whatsfucked up today may be fixed tomorrow, but its equally true that whats fine today may be fucked up tomorrow. We know at the endof Next to Normal that Diana has made a decision, but we have no idea how it will turn out. As the song says, they will go on...

The shows secondary story (and parallel Hero Myth journey) between Natalie and Henry, both mirrors and intersects with the primary

story. Like Diana, Natalie is also a misfit, but lucky for her, so is Henry. Structurally, Natalie and Henry are more serious , more integratedversions of Ado Annie and Will Parker. Throughout Next to Normal , there is an underlying tension as we slowly realize the friction betweenNatalie and Diana comes from Natalies fear that she will grow up to be ber -misfit Diana, that she is as broken as her mother. This fearpermeates and shape s Natalies relationship with Henry. Yorkey underlines this by setting these two couples together at one moment in ActI, when they actually say lines together in unison.

And while Diana takes her own Hero Myth journey, Natalie takes one too. Natalies goa l throughout the show is to find normality. But bythe end, she has learned that she has the wrong goal. Instead of trying to be normal in other words, like everybody else Natalie finallyunderstands that her real goal should be to figure out who she is and what her road is, just like the Youth in Passing Strange . We knowNatalie has grown up or is growing up near the end of the show when she sings to Diana:

I dont need a life thats normal. Thats way too far away.

But something next to normalWould be okay.


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Yeah, something next to normal,Thats the thing Id like to try, Close enough to normalTo get by...

Shes freeing Diana of guilt and expectations, and in the process, shes letting go of her own neuroses as well. Maybe Natali e has finally

realized, with the help of Stoner Zen Master Henry, that normal is artificial, that it is a construct. The Goodmans are not like other familiesbecause everyones road is different . There is no such thing as normal in the real world, just as there is no such thing as average. Thoselabels are about statistics, but our story is about complicated, ever-changing individuals. Normal has no meaning here.

And if there is no such thing as normal, can someone really be a misfit? Or are all of us misfits? Also, isnt life itself fundamentally chaotic?And if it is, doesnt that make all of us agents of chaos? As the kids in Spelling Bee remind us, "Life is random and unfair." Neither good orbad, wrong or right, just chaos. You can be scared by that or you can embrace the adventure. Diana and Natalie have been scared by thatand must both learn to embrace the adventure.

The shows title even seems to invoke (though probably unintentionally) the new American musical, in which love stories and Hero Mythsare as complicated as real life, in which there are no easy answers or endings, in which we can see ourselves and our own lives much moreclearly than we can see them in simplistic shows like The Sound of Music or Brigadoon . This isnt a "normal" musical (if there is such a

thing anymore), but it does use devices from both the R&H model and classic musical comedy (as in "Its Gonna Be Good"), so i ts fair tosay that Next to Normal is "next to normal"...

This story is not neat, tidy, or easily wrapped up in a nice little na rrative package, the way many musicals did in the old days. Thats part ofwhat some people hate about the New Golden Age of Musical Theatre that were in now, but its what others love most about it.

What Are You Doing in My Electricity?

In the off Broadway production, in a song (later cut) called "Feeling Electric," they did a trick with a hospital gurney up on its end and Ali ceRipley standing up against it, so it seemed like were were looking down on her from above. Its an effect also used in Into the Woods, TheCapeman, and Hairspray , but it works, its clear, and its always a fun bit of stage trickery. On Broadway using the new song "Wish IWere Here" in that spot they brought out a Diana double on a gurney while the real Diana sang from another part of the stage.

But arguably, the gurney gets in the way of the story because this scene doesnt really take place in the hospital; it takes place insideDianas anesthetized mind, in a hallucinatory dreamscape. Though Diana is on the table and Natalie is at a club, the two meet here inDianas dreamscape, and Diana says to her daughter, "Sweetheart! What are you doing in my electricity?" Even Diana has the se lf-awareness to know that shes inside her own head as its being zapped.

This song isnt about the hospital, its about the chaos in Dianas mind, as its under assault by the shock treatment, as her memories arebeing annihilated, as the electricity blasts away at her past and her very identity . After all, our sense of self comes from the accumulatedexperiences and understanding weve picked up along the Road of Life, so destroying memories whether temporarily or permanently means the destruction of self as well. From that perspective, the whole show becomes about Dianas struggle to save her own life.

This is a song about an existential threat to Dianas very existence. Its about Dianas consciousness and the violence done to it, representedby the throbbing rock beat in the music Dianas heartbeat, her lifeforce, in the voice of electric guitar. Its a powerful and subtle use of

music as storytelling, something of which Tom Kitt is a master just listen to High Fidelity .

The whole show is dreamlike to some degree, but a few moments in the show are very dreamlike, disorienting, disturbing, and revealing inways that more naturalistic writing or staging would not be. One of the reasons the show has such resonance for audiences is that Diana sortof stands in for America at this moment in our history confused by competing versions of reality, unable to rely on authority figures orlong- established institutions (government, education, religion, capitalism, etc.). Hero Myth stories like Dianas are metaphors fo r a humanlife, but theyre also a metaphors for our collective journeys, like the evolution of a society. "Wish I Were Here" represents the part of theHero Myth in which the Hero must journey to the Underworld and do battle with the Evil Wizard. Here the underworld is the fracturedpersonal reality of Dianas electrified mind, and the ECT is the Evil Wizards magic spell. But is Gabe her magic amulet or the antagonisthere? Or both?

Dianas Underworld easily stands in for Americas current darkness, in which competing parties cant even agree on what is fa ctually trueanymore, in which opponents compare each other to Hitler, in which one side rewrites school textbooks to comport with their belief system(and, lets be honest, in order to indoctrinate the next generation), in which so many of the rules of "polite society" have been tossed aside.How do we navigate this new, altered, dangerous landscape? As we watch Diana navigate her own Underworld, we gain some


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understanding of our own personal and collective Underworlds. "Wish I Were Here" is less about this damaged woman undergoing a scarymedical procedure, and more about Finding Your Way in the Dark.

Which is kind of the point of the whole show. How do we find our way when we have no map to guide us? We use art.

Sing a Song of Forgetting

"Song of Forgetting" in Act II is an interesting song structurally, because the verses are dialogue, but the choruses are commentary, a kindof Fourth Wall-busting that acts as a potent meta- moment because theyre singing about singing . In the original production, Dan sang thechorus to Natalie, presumably enlisting her into his warped agenda, but that choice makes Natalie into a more active player i n the familypsycho- drama, which doesnt mesh well with the rest of her character arc. Natalie stands outside the central storyline for most of the show,and thats important for the resolution of her story. The script doesnt say that Dans singing this to anyone in particular. If he sings thechorus to the audience, it makes us accomplices, and it leaves Dans dark agenda "unspoken" inside the reality of the story, which makes hismotivations richer and more complex, only to be gradually revealed to Natalie in "Better Than Before."

The phrase "Sing a song of..." has Biblical roots, but its intentionally ambigu ous here. Throughout human history, why do we sing songs?To celebrate and to remember. Is Dan celebrating Dianas memory loss? Notice specifically what hes celebrating:

Sing a song of forgetting... A song of the way things were not.Sing of whats lost t o you,Of times that you never knew....Sing of not remembering when,Of memries that go unremembered, and then Sing a song of forgetting again.

Hes celebrating the way things were not , times that they never knew . And then he sings of not remembering, andof unremembered memories. Also, notice that the first two lines dont rhyme they stick out, in order to underline the most important idea "the way things were not." This is a poetic way of articulating Dans agenda, which is to reshape Dianas an d the familys past to hisliking. This is a dangerous road hes going down, but we only gets hints of that here. The rich music gives it a romantic fee ling, but whenyou listen to what hes saying, we realize the song itself mirrors Dans duplicity, ope rating on two levels at once.

The song starts with the discovery of the breadth of Dianas memory loss after her treatment. Notice how natural the dialogue sounds, butalso notice that Yorkey never violates the structure and rhyming.

Dan This house and all these rooms?

Last Christmas or last year?Out back the dogwood blooms?Diana

Do I really live here?Dan The paint, the walls...

All this glass and wood...You dont recall? Diana

How I wish I could.Dan Our house on Walton WayThe house with the red door?Our trip to St. Tropez,The whole week a downpour?Natalie

My first few steps... And my first lost tooth...What, nothing yet?

Diana To tell the truth...


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Natalie Jesus.Dan Sing a song of forgetting...

A song of the way things were not.Sing of whats lost to you,

Of times that you never knew....Sing of not remembering when,Of memries that go unremembered, and then Sing a song of forgetting again.That day our child was born,Our baby girls first cry? That grey and drizzly morn,

Ive never felt so high.Diana The day we met...

And we shared two beers...Dan Then?

Diana I forget.Dan

But thats nineteen years! Diana That doctor Mitchell said there might be some memory loss.Dan

Doctor Madden.Diana Well, see, there you go.

Then Natalie explodes in a hard-driving, irregular rock and roll:

Natalie What a lovely cure...

Its a medical miracle. With a mind so pureThat she doesnt know anything. Dan

Its there Im sure Cause memories dont die. Natalie Why?Dan They dont die. Natalie They die...Diana

Ill try...

And then all three of them sing the chorus, but the words mean something different to each of them. Dans idealized past is p hony. Nataliespast is all pain. And Dianas past is gone. From these three conflicting perspectives, these words take on layers of meaning that slam upagainst each other and foreshadow the emotional collisions to come. Dan, Natalie, and Diana sing:

Sing a song of forgetting... A song of the way things were not.Sing of whats lost to you, Of times that you never knew.

Sing of not remembering when...Of memories that go unremembered, and then


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Sing a song of forgetting again.

Its remarkable writing. It functions both as a Brechtian commentary song, but also as a conventional book scene, in that it moves the storyforward, and it foreshadows Dans desperate decision to try and rewrite their family history.

The song "Better Than Before" uses the same kind of musical dialogue, but minus the Brechtian commentary.

Weve reached a new level of lyrical sophistication in the music al theatre today. Oscar Hammerstein invented the musical scene almost acentury ago, with "Make Believe" in Show Boat , and later with "If I Loved You" in Carousel . Stephen Sondheim developed it furtherin Sweeney Todd, Passion , and other shows. But in bare and Next to Normal , its been developed even further. Hammersteins musicaldialogue was always a bit stilted, sometimes having to rely on inverted sentences, odd word choices, etc. to make the trick work.Sondheims musical dialogue was almost too skillful (look at the stunning lyric for "Weekend in the Country"), often calling too muchattention to its own artistry. But Jon Hartmeres work in bare (just look at the remarkable "Wonderland" number) and Brian Yorkeyswork in Next to Normal have taken us to a whole new level. And thats very exciting.

We truly are in a new Golden Age of musical theatre, and Next to Normal is a shining example of that.

You Cant Tame Me

The 1937 agitprop musical The Cradle Will Rock uses clever label-names for its characters Reverend Salvation, Dr. Specialist, EditorDaily, Larry Foreman, and the rich capitalist Mr. Mister, along with his family Mrs. Mister, Junior Mister, and Sister Mister . Its a fable andits characters are types, so instead of trying to disguise that fac t, the shows writer and composer Marc Blitzstein openly admits it in the wayhe names them. There are several plays and musicals that do this, but not many. And of those that do, some make it very subtle and othersoutright announce it. Theres the Christ figure Jason and his companion Peter in bare , but theres also Orphan, Angel, and Edgar Allen Richin Celebration . And the slyly satirical Gitlow in Purlie . Next to Normal does it more subtly.

In Next to Normal , the bipolar woman at the center of the story is Diana Goodman. Right away, her last name sounds like a label-name, as ifto suggest that these are decent, normal people and by extension, that mental illness plays no favorites. Bad things happen to good people .Her first name references the Roman goddess of the hunt, the moon and birthing , who was also associated with wild animals and the woods(often the dark place of self-discovery in storytelling). The goddess Diana was widely known as "the virgin goddess of childbirth andwomen." But her first name takes on even more serious resonance once we start hearing Dan refer to her as "Di," which he does throughoutthe script. Its pretty potent for this damaged woman on the edgy of sanity to be called a name that sounds like die . And that nickname takeson even deeper resonance once we get to "Theres a World."

And then theres Gabe, named for one of the most famous angels in Christian culture, the archangel who serves as a messenger to humansfrom heaven, who announced the birth of Christ to the Virgin Mary. With that in mind, Gabes first lyric takes on even more meaning:

For just another day, For another stolen hour,When the world will feel my power

And obey. Its just another day, Feeling like Ill live forever...

The angel Gabriel appears to various people throughout the Bible, and in the Old Testament, he appears to the prophet Daniel, deliveringexplanations of Daniels visions.

Daniel is a Hebrew name, literally meaning "God is my judge." Is that a hint about Dans feelings of guilt? And does that reshape ourresponse to that last conversation between Dan and Gabe before the finale? And really, Goodman is Dans name Diana just married into it so maybe this label name is more about him. Diana refers to him in the song "Why Stay?" as "steadfast and stolid and stoic and solid."And not in a good way. Maybe the point here is that being a good man isnt enough in this situation. Maybe nothings enough.

Earlier in Act II, Gabe says, "Until you name me, you cant tame me," and its not until then that we realize no one has mentioned Gabesname yet. The moment when someone finally does is all the more potent because of that. All this seems to argue that these car efully chosennames are supposed to have meaning within the story.

But wait, theres more ... Where does the name Natalie come from? Its the English form of Natalia , which is derived from the Italian natale ,


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aggressive resistance, she quips, "Should we turn on a light? You know, with the st airs?" Its funny, but in the context of thisaction, light takes on a double meaning. Perhaps Yorkey is hinting that Madden might just lead Diana toward real enlightenment at last. Thenext time we hear the word is in "I Dreamed a Dream," as Diana slips into fantasy. She begins the song, "I saw you light the ballroom withyour sparkling eyes of blue." Here, light is beautiful, romantic, joyous.

This next time is a conversation late in Act I, in which Madden tells Dan that he recommends Electroconvulsive Therapy shock treatment .

Madden : ECT is indicated.

Dan : Wow. I mean they still do that?

Madden : We do, yes. Its the standard in cases like this. Shes got a long history of drug therapy andresistance, shes acutely suicidal its really our best optio n.

Dan : Thats kind of terrifying.

Madden : Its not. The electricity involved is barely enough to light a hundred -watt bulb.

Dan : (wry) Oh, if its just a hundred -watt bulb...

Here light is connected to electricity, danger, risk, and it also takes us back to Dianas reference to turning on a light in the hypnosis scene,and that opening moment of the show.

The Act I finale, Dans plea to Diana to agree to the ECT, is called "A Light in the Dark," and once again the word light tak es on all thesedifferent flavors of meaning illumination, enlightenment, happiness, peace, but also life. Dan sings:

One light shines in the drive One single sign that our house is alive.Our house, our own So why do I live there alone?Tell me why I wait through the night,

And why do I leave on the light?

Though the first images are concrete ones, this song operates in metaphor. They are living in a world of darkness, and Dan desperatelywants to find the light. Later in the song, he sings:

Take my hand, And let me take your heart. Keep it far From what keeps us apart Let us startWith a light in the dark.

And at the end of the song: I swear that somewhere in the nightTheres a light...

A light in the dark.

Hes right, but it may not be the light hes looking for. Dan is desperate to find the light, but Diana fears light, and he doesnt understandthat. Like many of the songs in the show, this one operates on both concrete and metaphorical levels at the same time.

As we begin Act II, we go inside Dianas head as she undergo es the ECT, in the song "Wish I Were Here," and her first line is:

In an instant, lightning flashes And the burst might leave me blind When the bolt of lightning crashes

And it burns right through my mind .


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Again, light is dangerous, destructive, painful. To Dan, light is salvation; to Diana, its the enemy. Later in the song, both Diana and Nataliesing, "Im the light and heat of every sun" Light illuminates but it also burns and consumes.

When Diana comes home, Madden suggests to Dan how to jog her memories "Keep it light at first, thats best. Careful that shes notdistressed." Here, light is about lightheartedness. In "How Could I Ever Forget?" one of Dianas recovering memories is "The lights of thecity flew past." Whether Yorkey intended it consciously or not, the phrase works on two levels, both as a concrete memory, and also as adescription of her returning memories her enlightenment rushing past her grasping mind.

In "Promise," Dans desperate recommitment to Diana later in the same scene , he sings:

To the girl who was burning so brightly Like the light from Orion above, And still I will search for her nightly If you see her, please send her my love.

Again, light is about burning . Is Dan the moth drawn to the flame, only to be consumed by it?

When Diana returns to Madden in the "Make Up Your Mind" reprise, he asks her to "Make up your mind there are moments of light." Lightas enlightenment, hope.

In the final scene, Natalie enters in the dark and says "Dad? What the hell? Why are the lights off?" Why is Dan choosing darkness? Nowlight takes on a final meaning, of facing up to truth, to life, a first step toward enlightenment. The finale, "Light," is a summing up, a tyingtogether of the themes of the show, and giving each character a mo ment to reflect on where theyve been and where they are headed. Eachcharacter uses images of light and dark in different ways. Natalie sings:

We need some light. First of all, we need some light.You cant sit here in the dark,

And all alone

Its a sor ry sight. Its just you and me. Well live. Youll see.

This is the first time Natalie uses light as metaphor, and she also physically turns on the light. Shes growing up and gaini ng enlightenmentof her own. In the next verse, Dan sings:

Night after night,Wed sit and wait for the morning light.

But weve waited far too long For all thats wrong To be made right.

Dan has not found the light yet, but he can see now that hes been on the wrong path. Later in the song, Gabe sings:

And when the night has finly gone, And when we see the new day dawn,Well wonder how we wandered for so long, so blind. The wasted world we thought we knew The light will make it look brand new.

And then they all sing, "So let it shine," repeating the word shine . Like the finale of Hair , this song recognizes the dark and implores us all of us to let the sun shine, to let the light in to vanquish the dark. The "we" they sing about is not just the Goodmans, but all of us . The

song and the show end with this incantation, this celebration of the human spirit:

Day after day...Well find the will to find our way,


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Knowing that the darkest skiesWill someday see the sun.When our long night is done...There will be light.There will be light...When we open up our lives,

Sons and daughters, husbands, wives And fight that fight...There will be light.There will be light.There will be light.There will be light!

Despite the darkness of the story, this finale offers some hope, limited and narrow though it might be. The light is o ut there, the charactersare telling us, but we must be open to it and we must fight against the dark. While Hair asked us, begged us, to let the sun shine in, Next to

ormal ends on a declarative statement there will be light. (Notice Yorkeys exclamation point on the last one!) Diana and Natalie haveboth found self-awareness and some kind of enlightenment or at the very least, theyre on their way. Dan has even taken a first tentativestep toward his own enlightenment. Will these people be okay? Who knows? Thats not the point. The point is the journey, the ongoingquest for light. Very much like the search for The Real in Passing Strange . These are the questions of a new century.

Textual themes like this dont always register consciously on an audience, but they do work on us. They create connections andassociations. They underline important moments and ideas. And this particular theme of light registers with all of us on such a primal level.We humans are always in search of light. Its pa rt of why Next to Normal connects so powerfully with audiences. We need light too.

Inside Next to Normal

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