Introduction to Theater

Owen Corey
12/15/10
Performance Response #4 – Professional Production

Next to Normal

Next to Normal, which I saw on Broadway, is a musical about an abnormal family living

in suburban America. The mother, Diana, played by Marin Mazzie, is struggling with severe

bipolar disorder and, as we find out later, grief and hallucinations. Her husband, Dan, played by

Jason Danieley, is loving but she describes him as boring and just a bit clueless. Their daughter,

played by Meghann Fahy is Natalie, the ideal of an overachiever whose one goal is to do well

enough in school to go to an Ivy League college and get away from her town and the problems

she associates with. She also loves music and practices almost obsessively. A boy at school,

Henry (played by Adam Chandler-Berat), a stoner and a slacker but with the same interest in

music as Natalie takes an interest in her. Gabriel, played by Kyle Dean Massey, is Dan and

Diana’s son, who died when he was 8 months old, but lives on as a vivid hallucination of

Diana’s. Diana’s two psychiatrists, Dr. Fine and Dr. Madden, are played by Louis Hobson. Dr.

Fine is a parody of modern day medicine-based psychology, prescribed endless mixes of drugs in

some seemingly random attempt to treat Diana. Madden, on the other hand, is a much more

sympathetic therapist, and legitimately tries to do some good.

This play is a domestic drama. It does not qualify as a tragedy, comedy, or melodrama. It

deals with middle class characters who have intense problems, which differs from the strict

definition of domestic drama characters dealing with normal, everyday problems. However, it

fits every other qualification, and every play is not designed so as to fit into a fairly arbitrary

category. This play is written in common language, and the characters speak or sing in the

manner in which an average person would today. The issues dealt with are those of intimate
relationships, especially pertaining to the family, and social issues such as the use of medicine

and biological treatments for psychological issues, the stigma attached to mental illness, and the

strains it puts on a family.

The play has an entirely causal structure: everything follows in logical succession and

one thing causes another. The principle of cause and effect is strongly embedded in the play. It

follows an episodic structure, with several different locales, and while there are only seven

characters, the events of the play are strung out over an extended period of time and are not all

intimately connected with one another. They achieve a snowball effect, building over a longer

period of time to a climax.

The play begins with an ideal stasis; the son, Gabriel, who in Diana’s mind is a grown

teenager, comes home late one night and Diana is waiting up for him worrying, in typical

motherly fashion. She sends him off to bed, and goes off to hop in bed with her husband. The

day begins with the aptly named song “Just Another Day,” seemingly portraying an average

American family in suburbia, problems and all. The daughter is a crazy overachiever, the son has

a wild streak, the marriage is not in huge danger but isn’t great. There are problems, but none are

anything too out of the ordinary for an American family. The problem, the main conflict of the

play, begins at the end of the song. Diana is making sandwiches, and then for an unexplained

reason has a breakdown, throwing bread down all over the chairs and the floor and continuing to

make the sandwiches in a completely rushed and disorganized fashion on the floor. She is finally

stopped by her husband, who sends the kids off to school. This is the inciting incident. It

establishes the central problem of the play, Diana’s psychological instability, and kicks off the

rising action, beginning with Dan and Diana talking about Diana going back to her psychiatrist.

It also introduces the major dramatic question of the play: can Diana overcome her illness?
 The play actually has two storylines which are clearly connected, but which develop

separately. The first is that of Dan, Diana, Gabriel, and her psychiatrist. Because of these two

storylines, I find that there are two lines of dramatic action which are intertwined, but not

entirely the same. The second involves Natalie and Henry. The stasis of this storyline begins

with Natalie practicing piano, singing to the audience her thoughts about her life, Mozart, and

her motivations. It is broken when she meets Henry, who comes to the practice room early to talk

to her. Their own rising action begins. They grow closer over the next few weeks, and eventually

Henry tells her that he is in love with her and they end up together.

In the meantime, Diana is treated by her psychiatrists and Dan has psychological

struggles of his own, a theme that runs through the play. Diana struggles with her disorder, going

back and forth from wanting treatment to not believing it works to not wanting treatment at all.

The two storylines frequently cross; for example, when Henry is invited to dinner with the family

(against Natalie’s will) by Dan, who is struggling to find normality in his family’s crazy life.

Dinner goes well until Diana brings out the cake she baked for her son’s birthday, and at this

point it is revealed to the audience that Gabriel is actually Diana’s hallucination. At this point the

entire complexion of the play changes. This is no ordinary family with big but not unusual

problems; Diana is suffering from not only a bipolar disorder but from an extreme, ingrained

hallucination that comes from extreme, unresolved grief over the premature death of her first

child.

The rising action continues its upward spiral: the stress of Diana’s disorder really starts to

affect the family. Dan alternates between depression and forced hope, Natalie’s intense schedule

combined with her mother’s illness causes her to become stressed and to fight with Henry.

Diana’s treatments become more drastic out of necessity, and she eventually undergoes ECT,
causing her to lose almost twenty years of memory. The family tries to cope as Diana tries to

recover her memory and Dan tries to rebuild their life to his ideal. Natalie starts to act out,

staying out late on all days of the week and taking her mother’s drugs, eventually pushing Henry

out of her life. The events continue to build: Diana’s hallucinations reappear, Natalie and Henry

finally work themselves out, Diana breaks down and finally opens up to her daughter, and finally

decides to discontinue her psychotherapy as well as her marriage to try to deal with her problems

on her own. Finally, the climax occurs after Diana walks out on Dan, leaving him crushed and

utterly clueless as to what to do. It is then that he is confronted by his own demons, in the same

form as those of Diana: Gabriel. He confronts Gabriel and for the first time in the play calls him

by name. It is the culmination and confrontation of the problem which runs through the entire

play, the specter of the family’s dead son which haunts them constantly. Dan, in ultimately

confronting the conflict, if not entirely resolving it, brings about the climax.

The falling action occurs quickly, with Natalie coming back home after the dance with

Henry to see her father utterly distraught. She comforts him, and symbolically turns on the lights,

bringing the play back to stasis. Diana is still struggling, as are Natalie and Dan, and the major

dramatic question remains unanswered, but the play resolves on a hopeful note.

Throughout the entire performance, I was for the most part pulled further and further in to

the play, to the point where the distance of my seating (back row balcony) was not a distraction.

Although the acting was in part presentational in the sense that most people outside of a theater

do not express their problems in song, that thought never crossed my mind during the

performance because of how well the actors made their motions and emotions come across

believably. The subject matter dealt with in the play is also something which, as a person

interested in becoming a psychiatrist, I could not help but feel an intense interest for. The set also
pulled me in to the experience by making the transitions between the scenes incredibly quick and

almost unnoticeable, the only push away being the very visible position of the orchestra.

This play and its message came across to me very well, and I thoroughly appreciated

almost everything the directors, set, costume, lighting, and sound designers, and actors did. The

only part of the experience which I did not understand was why the eyes had such significance.

That aspect of the set as well as the playbill goes completely unexplained. I would understand

had the eyes been masculine: the son overshadowing the family’s life. But the eyes are feminine,

and to this day I have no idea why they are the front of the playbill as well as a massive part of

the set.