Monday Night Show - Next To Normal

I saw Next To Normal last night at the Ahmanson. I was super excited to see it because I heard amazing things about it, it won a million awards, and I saw the cast perform at the Tony’s last year and it just looked good. I can’t say I was disappointed because the show was good, but the main actress Alice Ripley totally ruined it for me, which was the most surprising part because she’s won a lot of awards for her performance. Her singing voice just kind of ruined a lot for me. So even though the set was amazing and the lights were amazing and a lot of the singing was incredible, every time Alice Ripley opened her mouth to sing I wanted to cringe. It was so sad because someone would be singing on stage in a very pretty voice and then she would chime in and just train wreck the shit out of the song. I couldn’t even describe the sound that came out of her mouth. It was as if she was trying to suppress an accent while having the corners of her mouth sewn shut. It was just weird.

The story is nothing like I have ever seen before and that’s probably the reason the play has won so many awards including a Pulitzer. It’s about a mom who has some major psychological issues all stemming back to the death of her son 17 years ago. She has a daughter to replace the son, but she never seems to get over the loss and kind of neglects her daughter. She goes into intensive therapy with the backing of her loving husband to relieve her insanity and it all kind of makes things worse. In the end she leaves and I was left holding back a lot of tears. It makes me thankful that I had a very good up bringing. The story was definitely touching and I could hear a lot of sniffles in the audience so I know I wasn’t the only one who was moved.

I wonder if the show would have been amazing for me if Alice Ripley wasn’t the main character. Everyone kept ranting and raving about the fact that she’s in the touring cast because she originated the role on Broadway and was amazing in it, but I just didn’t see it. In fact, like I said she just ruined it for me. It was no longer about the subject matter of the show. It was all about hearing the pretty voices over her frog voice. Makes me wonder how she got the role in the first place. Maybe she was sick because she sounds ok here…