"and If Memory Makes Things Better... Well Memory Always Does" Ok Then Mr. Repressed Feelings 3000

It's been a little over a month since my second time at Next to Normal London and I have some thoughts

(note: this was mostly translated from a review I wrote in Italian so some phrasing might sound strange)

Like many of you, I knew Next to Normal thanks to several videos of the original Broadway production, while my first time live was with the good Italian adaptation directed by Marco Iacomelli. It’s a musical that I have always appreciated and admired, but for some reason, there had never been the emotional impact necessary to make me feel like it was mine. The original version was chronologically closer to the end of the nineties than any subsequent production and I believe that the influence of the analytical deconstruction of the American nuclear family so relevant in the culture of those years (think of American Beauty) greatly influenced how the musical was originally conceived. In the direction, in the performances of the original cast, in the visuals, I have always found a coldness that led the libretto towards biting and detached social criticism rather than emotional involvement. Obviously, I do not believe this is a flaw, on the contrary. I really appreciate the analytical approach to social criticism and I believe that in this Next to Normal was revolutionary in its genre. But a lot of time has passed since then and many things have changed in the way we perceive the concepts of family, social relationships, neurodivergence and gender. The thing that surprises me most, from a personal point of view, is that along with all this I also feel changed and the more the years pass the more I realize that intellectualism is not everything and that it’s so important to consume art that expresses pure and raw human experience, that shows open wounds without fear of being accused of excessive emotionality. Until a few years ago, the social attitude towards artistic experiences so shamelessly sincere in showing feelings branded them as superficial. Today, I believe, the trend is changing, the new generations are discovering the importance of sensitivity and fragility that doesn’t need to be hidden, which is no longer accompanied by a sense of shame and inferiority. This is the new Next to Normal. It is no longer the show of 2008, it is no longer a successful exercise in style that wants to say in music what Sam Mendes had said in film, what Jeffrey Eugenides and Sofia Coppola had said with their Virgin Suicides.

Next to Normal is now pure and raw life. It is the human experience that shows itself in all its incoherence, without fear of going straight to the heart, without fear of staging a melodrama in which there are no winners and no heroes, definitely without fear of making the audience uncomfortable. An audience that, if truly sensitive, will find something of their own personal chaos in the chaos of what is shown to us.

The price of love is loss, but still we pay, we love anyway. This, in my opinion, is the key lyric of this new identity of Next to Normal, a lyric that in its most intimate nature had not really found expression in the previous and more “clinical” versions of the musical. It is a sentence that for the first time truly speaks to the heart and expresses a chilling truth, which we must all accept as a rule of life and which all the characters on stage must accept by extension. You will always lose what you love, in one way or another. It is not just about the loss of Gabe. Diana loses herself along with her son, but she also loses the love of her life and loses the chance to be a mother to Natalie. Natalie loses faith in the possibility of changing and getting out of the unhealthy relationships of her family, ending up a victim, with the only glimmer of hope represented by Henry. Dan loses the girl he had loved and the boy he had been and, for the love of Natalie, he manages to save his sanity, but he loses the opportunity to know what it feels like to be a father to Gabe. Caissie Levy, Jamie Parker, Eleanor Worthington-Cox all have the ability to manifest the most intimate, difficult, disturbing part of their characters. They are people who are losing themselves and everything they believe in and like anyone with a heartbeat, the attitude in the face of loss is fear, anger, an extreme attempt to cling to what can be saved. It is not always pleasant to see, as I said there are no heroes on that stage and the three actors lose themselves into performances that seem to have no safety net.

Then there is Gabe. I have great respect for many of the actors who played him in the past, but theirs was the Gabe suited to that historical moment. He was the perfect varsity jock that every American soccer mom wanted: handsome, athletic, self-confident. With an unsolved mystery inside, which emerged restless and dangerous. In this new era in which sensitivity is the only weapon to counteract the lack of humanity that the world offers us, Jack Wolfe gives us a Gabe who is delicate, fragile, ambiguous, selfish and desperately attached to "life".

Every look, every gesture, every expression aided by Wolfe's enormous expressive eyes show us a Gabe who is not the projection of an ideal, but something much more terrible: he is the projection of disease, a shield that Diana uses to protect herself from reality, not by creating a perfect version of the son she never had, but by creating a codependent version of a son who will never leave her. Everything in Wolfe's Gabe speaks of a morbid attachment that Diana creates as the only way to ensure that Gabe never leaves her, using him to push Natalie and Dan away, shaping him in her mind as a boy who will never replace his mother with another woman. Just this morning I read that Michael Longhurst, the director, openly said that he took inspiration from his adolescence as a homosexual boy for his version of the character. The very strong queer-coding of this version of Gabe is perfect for this new vision of a codependent relationship and elevates the drama of loss to something heartbreaking and apparently with no escape. The other incredible aspect of the new direction of this new Gabe, and of the performance, is that for the first time the character made me feel uneasy. I thought after this second viewing that it would take very few changes to transform this production of Next to Normal into a real psychological horror in which the ghosts are pure destructive energy linked to the lack of a clear break with their life on earth. Because if we move away from the vision of Gabe as a projection of the disease, if we accept Gabe as an almost supernatural manifestation of unresolved mourning, the character in Wolfe's hands takes on frightening twists. His Gabe has the attitude of a newborn who has grown only in body. His needs are still the primary ones of the child he was when he died, his attachments are so strong and primordial that they lead him to challenge anyone who questions them. His need to have his mother by his side leads him to be destructive, but with all the naivety of a child who does not understand the consequences of his actions. From this point of view, There’s a World becomes a moment that really gives you the shivers, full as it is of all the need of a child who cannot imagine anything outside of his own needs. A child who, out of excess love, hugs his puppy too tightly and ends up suffocating it.

Finally, since I have already gone on too long, I just wanted to add how that hunger for love translates in this production also into a need to rediscover love for oneself, which however in the borderline situation described in the story becomes an unhealthy condition: the continuous parallels between Diana and Natalie, masterfully interpreted by the two actresses, show us the dark and self-destructive side of Diana, trapped in an infinite cycle of need to rediscover herself and need to love her daughter that transform into envy for the potential that her daughter still has ahead of her and that she has left behind. These types of parallels are often found between the characters and find a touching expression in the physicality of the actors, as in the choice to create continuous references between Diana and Gabe's movements, even before the audience becomes aware of the bond between the two. Every acting choice, every directorial choice, everything brings into that rational and linear kitchen (the Bauhaus poster is brilliant) the most twisted, confused, desperate and breathless aspect of the human experience. Next to Normal, in this version, is truly not just a show, it is a mirror.

on gabe: ghosts, grief, and wants.

before i get started: this is all my opinion! i've been into n2n since 2010 so i've had a lot of time to think about this (thank you dunmar warehouse thank you) the thing that those who are pro-poltergeist/demon/ghost/etc gabe don't consider, i think, is that i'm alive tells us everything that we need to know.

he is not just want diana wants him to be. he's what natalie wants him to be, he's what dan wants him to be, he's even what dr. madden wants him to be.

one of the reasons why he takes the melody in superboy and the invisible girl is (aside from the absolute juiciness narratively of her brother that she's singing about overshadowing her in her own song about him overshadows her) because natalie in that moment wants to feel validated, like she's correct in assuming that gabe Is More Acknowledged Than Her and in fact Is An Asshole, which is why he's smiling and bragging so much. (in my opinion!!!)

he isn't able to be seen by dan for most of the show, because that's exactly what he wants him to be: invisible. not there. the reason why he sees him at the end (other than the acknowledgement of grief as a larger symbol and made into a tangible form) is because some part deep inside of him wants someone at that moment; diana is gone, natalie is too. he wants to feel held, so he gets held. (in my opinion!!!)

dr. madden knows him as a baby who died, which is why in make up your mind / catch me i'm falling he's cradling himself in his mother's lap, why his voice becomes more childlike. (in my opinion!!!)

the problem is we are trying to define an abstract concept in simple terms, which is just not possible. not only is gabe a symbol of grief, he very much is a hallucination of diana's, and tends to side with her for that reason. (in just another day, diana is talking about how beautiful the day is, and the only one who agrees with her is gabe- "birds are singing, things are growing", etc.)

and then, of course:

guys, that's the point.

poltergeist? ghost? hallucination? symbol of grief? abstract? that's the point. we aren't supposed to know what gabe is. it's paradoxical. "what you want me to be / your worst fear", "i'll hurt you / i'll heal you", "your wish, your dream come true / your darkest nightmare too". that's how grief is. you don't know exactly what it is. is it love without a place to go? is it anger for losing them? anger at yourself for letting them be lost? gabe can be more than one thing.

especially with theatre! every gabe is going to be different! aaron's gabe is different than jack's gabe is different than kyle dean massey's gabe is different than a community theatre somewhere's gabe! that's the point! some gabes may play him as the all american football throwing jock, some may play him as an evil poltergeist, some may play him as a whiny child who needs his mom. that's the point! the interpretation means what it means to you and how you see it! he means what he means to you! we can discuss all day long about what is the objectively correct opinion on who or what gabe is (i am guilty of this. look at the previous paragraphs), but at the end of the day…

he is what YOU want him to be.

carolyn maitland and ben heathcore are so hilarious together! i’m PRAYING someone gets an audio of the cover run, cause their dan and diana are gonna be so great

I love how Henry soley exits to be Natalie's supportive boyfriend.

Next to Normal | Wyndham's Theatre | July, 2024 Caissie Levy as Diana Goodman Jamie Parker as Dan Goodman 📹:@mttztrading

Diana - Dan Diana - Gabe Diana - Natalie Dan - Gabe Dan - Natalie Gabe - Natalie

Been thinking lately about how Next to Normal would go if Gabe were a girl and the only change I've come up with so far is that she stays on stage during "Why Stay?/A Promise" and harmonizes/sings along with "To the girl who was burning so brightly/Like the light from Orion above"

I rlly like that abed from community wants to socialize and wants to have friends. I feel like it’s a trope in sitcoms especially where the autistic character doesn’t care about other ppl and doesn’t want to make an effort to be social bcus they are just too Logical or smth, which I feel like is a kind of cold take on what the autistic experience often is. I love sm that abed rlly wants to understand and connect with ppl but he hates that he can’t, that is rlly real and relatable. I just love that community manages to write an autistic character that behaves cold and blunt and has trouble understanding empathy but at the same time is full of emotion and love for others and has a longing for friendship and connection. Neurotypical writers tend to assume sometimes that autistic ppl who behave “robotically” don’t have feelings or social needs but that is often not true. I’m like abed, I struggle with socialization and often seem like I dont want to be interacting with ppl when I am but I actually rlly want to connect with ppl and love to make friends and I just can’t understand how. and I just love community for exploring the nuance there

niche aesthetic: the era of next to normal where the rips of jack wolfes jeans would increase every show

How Dance Symbolises Relationships In Next To Normal

Was going through my drafts and found this post and I feel as though with the pro-shot being released yesterday it's a nice time to post it.

Dancing is used throughout N2N to facilitate a deeper understanding of how characters view each other. Its first mention is in "My

Psychopharmacologist and I" when Diana is describing Dr. Fine and says "It's like an odd romance // Intense and very intimate // We do our dance." Here it's implied that her 'dance' with Dr. Fine is well-established, she has made little long-term progress with her issues over the course of seeing him. It is habit more than help.

After that there's "I Dreamed A Dance".

Here dancing is a platform that Diana can use to dreams of a life with Gabe. Dancing is a physical act, often one where partners will hold onto each other in some way, and this is exactly what she lacks with Gabe - physical presence to engage with. Dreaming of not just a life with him, but a dance, shows how she has idealised their relationship. Since he exists entirely in her head, she knows the ins and outs of him in a way that no parents ever truly knows their teenage child. In order to dance with someone you need to know what move they will make before they make it. It adds weight to her omniscient relationship with Gabe, which is starkly juxtaposed against her distant relationship with Natalie

The most compelling lyric in the song, and the one I'll come back to later is the only lyric which Gabe also sings, which is "The dancers may disappear // Still the dance goes on."

The dancers, the physical beings that can be touched and held and can take part in the act of dancing, fade away, but the act of dancing can remain. It doesn't require the same presence as a dancer. It's a tidy, heart wrenching summary of their entire relationship. Gabe isn't there, but Diana will take part in their life together anyway.

Dancing is brought up again when Henry invites Natalie to a dance after they don't speak for a while. She rejects him twice throughout the second act until she finally goes and meets him there after reconciling with Diana. The dance is the "prop" around which Natalie can engage or disengage herself from Henry. When she chooses to go to the dance with him she chooses that relationship, to be with him. To know and learn about each other.

The final time dancing is mentioned is in "So Anyway". 'And true, it's quite a trick to tell the dancers from the dance'

This is a callback to the "I Dreamed A Dance" lyric. Diana recognises how she's been swept up in the 'dance', these visions of a life with Gabe, and that has detached her from the physical dancers, the people in her reality.

What this does mean, is by the end of the musical, Dan is the only character who never 'enters into dance' or rather a life with somebody. Diana and Dr. Fine do, Diana and Gabe do, and Henry and Natalie do. This speaks to how he is generally detached. To enter a dance implies an agency which he lacks throughout the musical as he gives up on his life time and time again to try and get the 'girl he knew' back. Diana leaves him, Natalie finds a 'dance' outside their family, and Gabe haunts him despite his begging.

sometimes i think about this gif from n2n and get lightheaded because it’s so cunty