Tim Fuller/Arizona Theatre Company
Joe Cassidy, Andrea Ross, Jonathan Shew and Kendra Kassebaum in Arizona Theatre Company’s 'Next to Normal.'
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- 11:16pm — May 17, 2013
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1 comment on this story
Don’t go see it at ATC.*
While the hallmark of a great piece of theatre is the level of emotions that it stirs inside of you, this one doe s reach heretofore un-reached heights,. Unfortunately the emotions that it stirred were untamed as well, and not some of the ones that I am usually willing to face head-on. NtN takes the innermost fears of family and love and flays them open under the glaring light of a surgical table, and pokes at them with sharp and cold instruments. In song.
It *is* an emotional roller coaster, but you spend the first few minutes listening to the click-click-click of the climb to the initial peak, and the rest of the first act in a stomach-churning, emotional, cliff-like drop. Intermission is as much of a reprieve as the caesura shared between two comic characters falling to their death. The fall, and the screaming, takes up right where it left off when the second act resumes.
While the4 end of the play does not offer a nice, American Musical Theatre Patented Happy Ending, it does arrive at terminal velocity with the promise of a para’chute being deployed, if everyone works hard and co-operatively gets along. There is no promise that the ‘chute will save anyone, and even an inkling that there might be an Acme Anvil in that pack.
The lighting deserves more than just “It was good”. It worked in tandem with the set to give the space, well… space. Having spent quite a bit of time on that stage with the set under worklights, the transformation that it makes when combined with the lighting is astonishing. The result is far greater than the sum of it’s parts.
I will give you the sound issue,though. The voices sounded alternately like cartoon characters, greeting card recordings, and as if they were coming from off-stage, in a box. When it was right, it was great, but when it wasn’t, it was pretty horrendous.
*Go, see it. It’s fantastic.