A gifted young director has reinvented Broadway’s Next To Normal for USC’s Musical Theatre Repertory in an all-student production blessed by a uniformly superb cast, seamlessly integrated choreography, and an electrifying lighting design.

One of only ten musicals to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey’s Next To Normal introduces us to suburban couple Diana and Dan Goodman, long-married spouses who would, on the surface at least, appear to be heading “the perfect loving family.”

The Goodmans are far from even coming close.

That Diana (Tali Green) suffers from manic depression is something we begin to suspect from the moment she sets about scattering slice upon slice of bread on the kitchen floor, the better to speed up morning sandwich prep.

Zoloft, Paxil, Buspar and Xanax are just a few of the prescription meds prescribed by Diana’s shrink Dr. Fine (Yahm Steinberg), and though these drugs may have lessened her anxiety, their side effects have her wondering whether any gain is worth the pain.

 Meanwhile, Dan (Ryan Myers) does his best to hold the household together, seventeen-year-old Gabe (Jack Walz) brags that soon “the world will feel my power and obey,” and aspiring pianist Natalie (Lily Castle), a year Gabe’s junior, has only music to maintain her relative stability.

When Diana decides to go it alone, sans shrink, sans drugs, sans annoying side effects, who should show up to meet the family but Natalie’s head-over-heels boyfriend Henry (Jamie Gallo), and a shocking revelation has us suddenly reevaluating all we’ve come to believe about this not even next-to-normal family.

As deep and dramatic and gripping as the best contemporary two-act play (Yorkey wrote the musical’s Tony Award-nominated book), Next To Normal features a Tony-winning score (music by Kitt, lyrics by Yorkey) that combines rock rhythms, catchy melodies, and clever, insightful lyrics.

All of this adds up to a 21st-century musical that leaves an audience entertained, shaken, better informed about mental illness, and profoundly moved, reactions I’ve had to all ten previous productions I’ve seen beginning with its Broadway National Tour almost a dozen years ago.

One thing that virtually every one of these iterations has had in common, including MTR’s first Next To Normal in 2017, is a fairly literal scenic design that spends most of its time inside the Goodman’s furnished home.

This time round, however, director Nico Fife has stripped all of that down to six chairs, five of them straight-back and one of the office swivel variety, with the audience seated on opposite sides of a mostly otherwise bare black-box stage.

The result is a Next To Normal that takes us inside Diana’s brain with the people in her life spinning round her both as participants in and as witnesses to a life gone haywire, a surrealism enhanced by Jacob Hollens’ dramatically vivid, endlessly inventive lighting design and by movement director Anna Street’s seamlessly integrated expressionist choreography.

And this is just one of director Fife’s inspired touches.

Another, a distinctively post-2020 update, has characters entering from the outside world wearing face masks, which they remove once inside the family bubble, a place that ought to be a safe haven were it not for the dysfunction within.

Yet another is Fife’s decision to reflect gender and sexual diversity by recasting Diana’s therapists (the second of whom is an object of her desire) as women, and Henry (aka Natalie’s “favorite problem”) as trans.

Still, as innovative as Fife’s directorial vision is, none of this would work without an ensemble capable of meeting Next To Normal’s myriad of challenges, and youthful though they all may be, every single MTR cast member shines brilliantly.

Green captures Diana’s hopes and fears to heartrending effect, a magnetic Walz gives Gabe a smile that can turn from angelic to diabolical in an instant, Gallo’s Henry is a winning mix of sweetness and sincerity, and Steinberg is a stunner, especially in rockstar mode.

Best of all, Castle’s achingly vulnerable Natalie makes it clear that her 2020 Scenie win as Student Performer Of The Year was no fluke, and Myers takes a role that has been the weak link in more than a few Next To Normals I’ve seen and makes Dan every bit as compelling as Diana, with baritone pipes that come as the most welcome of surprises.

And Myers isn’t the only topnotch singer in the cast. All six performers merit vocal kudos under Nick Kassoy and Samuel Avila’s expert music direction, accompanied by a pro-caliber six-piece live band*.

Adding to an overall excellent design package are Jordan Anderson’s scenic design, Courtney Frank’s costumes, Zoe McCracken’s properties, and Renata Finamore’s sound design.

Indeed the only minus in an otherwise outstanding production is that spoken dialog is occasionally overpowered by amped musical underscoring.

Ian Connolly is assistant director. Emiko Ohta is dramaturg. Erica Ammerman is production manager and Monica Kosmos is technical director. Lisa Toudic is stage manager.

Next To Normal is produced by Sarah Campbell and Eli Ruano. Scott Weinstein is assistant producer.

I’ve been raving about Musical Theatre Repertory’s student-directed-designed-performed productions since the Next To Normal cast was in elementary school. The highest praise I can give MTR’s latest is to simply say this. It’s one of their all-time best.

*Tim Fullerton, Kassoy, Jordan Krankel, Andrew Siehr, Romél Veal Jr., and Savannah Watson

Massman Theatre at USC.
www.uscmtr.com

–Steven Stanley
March 5, 2022
Photos: Erin Newsom

Tags: Brian Yorkey, Los Angeles Theater Review, Musical Theatre Repertory, Tom Kitt, USC School Of Dramatic Arts