The Cal State Long Beach Theatre Arts Department and California Repertory production of Next to Normal could literally do no wrong.
Dominated by the light and ease of actor Alexander Pimental, the production was well worth the audience’s standing ovation.
This is not your typical musical; it does not lift your spirits with playful music, rather the score, by Tom Kitt, and the book and lyrics, by Brian Yorkey, toy with your soul.
Opening night was April 8, and the CSULB production will run through May 11. If there were ever a time to drop everything and see a university-level musical production, this is it. Joanne Gordon, formerly the chair of the theatre arts department at CSULB, directed the show, and in doing so created something totally different from her more recent productions on campus, which have included Spring Awakening, Sideshow and B.S.: Bukowski-Sondheim, A Work in Progress.
Gordon directed a relatively small cast in this show, but size truly made no difference — this cast took up all the room on the stage with the presence and intensity of their work. Diana, the lead role played by Karole Foreman, is a heart-breaker in all the right ways.
The mother of an anguished teenage daughter, Diana struggles to come to terms with the loss of her first-born child, Gabe. Diana combats her inability to cope with a variety of “treatments,” administered by the versatile vocal stylings of Roberto Alcaraz, who took the stage over and over again by surprise playing the roles of a handful of “doctors.”
Dan, played by the burly Jeff Paul, is Diana’s love-hungry husband, who is determined to stick by her side as she battles what seems to be incredibly vivid hallucinations, or visions, of her son. The spirit of Gabe and his mother have formed a bond far beyond that of a mere figment of the imagination.
As such, the young Natalie, as performed by the small but mighty Sarah Kennedy, who must constantly battle Gabe’s memory for the attention of her mother.
Kennedy’s voice at the start of the show seemed to be just a notch above the average Disney kid’s singing style, but all that changed over the course of the production, as her character evolved and endured the ups and downs of her mother’s depression. By the show’s end, Kennedy was a vocal power-house, much to the chagrin and emotional drain of her high school sweetheart, a sad, love-struck puppy dog played by the sweet, serenading vocals of actor Michael Barnum.
In the final phase of the show, just as it seems that the three living members of this extremely fragile suburban family might regain some semblance of ordinary togetherness in their home, the lively Gabe pulls his mother from reality once again in a heart-wrenching reprise of his first act’s playful number, “I’m Alive.” Diana breaks free of her family once and for all, and Gabe, so enchanting the audience can’t help but root for him despite the darkness and pain his character represents, is realized for the first time in the eyes of his father.
The show ends with the terrifying implication that, for Natalie, life will never be anything even close to normal … and somehow Joanne Gordon’s production of this show leaves the audience feeling like something next to normal, or far from normal, is perfectly acceptable.