[UPDATE: And here's The Review from Chronicle Theatre Critic Robert Hurwitt.]
Smash Broadway success next to normal started its run at SHN’s Curran Theatre yesterday.
From Orchestra Row M:
Next to Normal is intense … so is Alice Ripley’s performance. How does this chanteuse mash up singing with crying? The same confusing way you’ll endure at times uncomfortable emotional voyeurism of a family’s breakdown and rebirth. You might also want to seek therapy after the show … and that’s a good thing.
And the Twitter:
“Amazing night of theater: “Next to Normal” from @shnsf in SF. Intense, emotional, sometimes difficult, but the score, lyrics, & cast are WOW.”
This is the straightest-from-Broadway straight from Broadway show we’ve had in a long time, right?
Check out the deets, below.
It’s the role of a lifetime for star Alice Ripley, of course.
Bonus: The San Francisco affiliate of the non-profit National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) is co-sponsoring NAMI Awareness Night on February 11th. See about that after the jump.
“The musical opened on Broadway in April 2009. It was nominated for eleven 2009 Tony Awards and won three, Best Original Score, Best Orchestration and Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical for Alice Ripley. It also won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, becoming just the eighth musical in history to receive the honor. The previous musical to win the Pulitzer was Rent, in 1996, which was also directed by Michael Greif. In awarding the prize to Kitt and Yorkey, the Pulitzer Board called the show “a powerful rock musical that grapples with mental illness in a suburban family and expands the scope of subject matter for musicals.”
