We’ve been seeing commercials for Next to Normal recently and haven’t understood them. But when Brian and MyGuytm were in town last week they saw it not once, but twice. They were completely blown away. The New York Times was too, writing this when the show opened this past Wednesday: “This brave, breathtaking musical, which opened Wednesday night at the Booth Theater, focuses squarely on the pain that cripples the members of a suburban family, and never for 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 standard feel-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.”
On Brian’s stellar recommendation, I downloaded the cast recording on Friday and was sold immediately. The score is amazing and the performances on the recording are fantastic. I think this show will be our anniversary date in a couple weeks because it just cries out to be seen.
I found a couple of YouTube clips to share. First is my current favorite song in the score: “Superboy and the Invisible Girl” sung by a daughter who feels she’s the Invisible Girl to her brother’s Superboy. The second video is a montage of clips from the show when it was at the 2nd Stage Theatre earlier in its development.
Obviously, I’ll write more on this once we see it.
