I'm not done with "Next to Normal," but I have some disjointed thoughts:
*This century saw the birth of the Sad White Person Musical. I'm thinking of "Spring Awakening," "N2N," "Dear Evan Hansen." (I haven't seen the Alanis Morissette musical, but I have a feeling it might fit.) The Sad White Person Musical has a few standard elements: a suicide attempt (either successful or not), a fractured white family, a pop-inflected score, and a candid discussion about mental illness.
*Watching the Broadway version of "N2N," it was difficult not to conclude that Alice Ripley herself was unhinged. Not just Diana the character, but also Ripley the performer. Ripley's vocal damage became a part of her myth: She was so committed, she wasn't taking care of herself. Though Caissie Levy gives a strong performance (and one that must exhaust her), she has a level of control that becomes somewhat distracting. It's hard to believe that her Diana is quite as imperiled as the script needs her to be.
*The script raises questions about writerly responsibility. ECT is depicted as a near-catastrophic event, but I recall from the Daphne Merkin memoir that today's ECT really isn't the "Frances Farmer" scenario we might envision. Also, the broad, juvenile satire of psychiatry seems somewhat cruel and ignorant (and also not anything like "Pulitzer Prize" writing). This didn't really bother me fifteen years ago, but it bothers me now.
I'll keep going.
P.S. It occurs to me that "Evan Hansen" raises the bar by including not one but two suicide attempts: one aborted, one completed.
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