A Saccharine Set: A Review of “Next to Normal” at Paramount Theatre

Paramount Theatre’s “”Next to Normal,” with Diana (Donna Louden, seated) her daughter Natalie (Angel Alzeidan), Natalie’s boyfriend Henry (Jake DiMaggio Lopez), Diana’s son Gabe (Jake Ziman), and her doctor (Devin DeSantis)/Photo: Liz Lauren

Oscar Wilde has been attributed with a quote about Dickens’ novel “The Old Curiosity Shop,” “One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.”

Whether anyone but Wilde ever laughed at the death of Little Nell is doubtful, but the line makes a good point about the problem of sentimentality. While great narrative art should stir deep emotion—it has to be earned through good, honest storytelling. Misused and overused emotion comes off as manipulative and cheap. It’s Hallmark movie emotion—the kind that makes you roll your eyes instead of really feeling something.

This is the problem with “Next to Normal,” a rock musical about a suburban mom with bipolar disorder, a Paramount Theatre production playing at the Copley Theatre in Aurora. There’s nothing wrong with the idea of a rock opera about mental illness and trauma—Pete Townshend’s “The Who’s Tommy” just ended a highly acclaimed, sold-out run at the Goodman Theatre. It’s good to talk about this widely misunderstood condition and the effect it has on families—the theater provides handouts from the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance for those who need help.

But “Next to Normal,” with music by Tom Kitt and book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey, is not up to the challenge and complexity of its subject. The songs are mostly banal and overly amplified for a small, 165-seat theater, with too much soaring vibrato. The lyrics have obvious rhymes that can land with wince-inducing clunks: “Until you name me/You can’t tame me”’ “If you won’t grieve me/you won’t leave me”; and “I want who I knew/She’s somewhere in you.”

The characters—troubled mom, long-suffering dad, angry teenage daughter, sweet stoner boyfriend, beloved son, smooth-talking doctor—are generic. They don’t seem like people so much as figures in a case study—Patient A and Spouse B. We learn that the parents met as architecture students—so it’s presumed that Dan (Barry DeBois) is now an architect and Diana (Donna Louden), who got pregnant while in school, has some gift for art and design. But other than a reference to decoupage, you don’t hear about it—Diana’s character is limited to her symptoms, and her roles as wife and mother.

Paramount Theatre’s “”Next to Normal,” with Devin DeSantis (front) as Dr. Madden, (back, from left) Jake Ziman as Gabe, Donna Louden as Diana and Barry DeBois as Dan/Photo: Liz Lauren

The play is also confusing about bipolar disorder. While it has witty things to say about the drugs used and their side effects, it’s unclear what it believes about treatment. Are the doctors wrong and the drugs and shock therapy just terrible, or is the severity of Diana’s illness beyond help? The play ends with a smiling anthem about hope and sunlight, which contradicts the previous two hours.

All of this is not the fault of the six actors, who do a fine job with the songs and do their best to vibrate their cardboard personae into something resembling real human beings. As Diana, Louden is terrific, with a supple voice that goes from roars to snarls to pure bel canto sweetness. Louden brings humor to her character—which appears in this exceedingly earnest show like water in a desert. It’s fun to watch her face when she meets her new doctor (Devin DeSantis) and imagines him to be a crotch-stroking, black-suited rock star. She’s amused, aroused and skeptical all at once. (DeSantis is a great fit for this fantasy—he played Tommy in a previous Paramount production). Louden’s rendition of “I Miss the Mountains” (a good song about missing the highs of mania that were deadened by psychotropic drugs) is touching, as is her duet with son Gabe (talented Aurora native Jake Ziman) in “I Dreamed a Dance.” Angel Alzeidan manages to make the daughter Natalie sympathetic, even while she is being self-destructive and annoying.

This review does not reflect the popular opinion about “Next to Normal.” It earned the 2009 Tony Award for Best Musical Score for Kitt, and a 2010 Pulitzer for Yorkey for drama. Audience members at Thursday’s opening night performance were weeping and wiping their eyes—in the washroom after the show, one woman told a friend that she had soaked her tissues and messed up her eye makeup. The play works for many people. But it could have been better. There is wonderful theater and cinema that deals with mental illness—Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” and The Who’s “Quadrophenia,” to name just a few. They draw tears, too, but with more art.

“Next to Normal,” presented by Paramount Theatre, playing at Copley Theatre, 8 East Galena Boulevard, Aurora, paramountaurora.com, through September 3.