Barcelona, Spain — When Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkie started writing the 2008 rock musical “Next to Normal,” Yorkie wanted to create a piece that “draws the audience into the heart of the protagonist.” The character, Diana Goodman, is a suburban wife and mother with bipolar disorder, working on the dire symptoms of her mental illness while trying to maintain her functional life.
The emotional musical not only won the Pulitzer Prize in 2010, but also performed on Broadway in the booth theater from 2009 to 2011, evoking audience sympathy. To the turmoil and ambiguity that plagues everyone around her, not just Diana. “
Today, the audience here is experiencing “Next to Normal” in a whole new way. Immersive 1-hour production Recently opened at Festival Grecde Barcelona. This version, without props, sets and live orchestras, is on display at the venue with an open floor plan, surround sound system and 360 degree projection. The cast will be performed in English with super titles in Spanish and Catalan and a ghostly witness spectator sitting in a small cube and sharing a home with the Goodman family.
Alice Ripley, who played the role of Diana, returns to that role and shares the stage with Andy Senor Jr., who plays her husband Dan. Luis Edgar who plays her son Gabriel. Jade Lauren who plays her daughter Natalie. And Natalie’s love concerns, Eloy Gomez and Henry. However, some of Ripley’s most thrilling interactions take place with actors thousands of miles away. Adam Pascal plays her “rock star” doctor and holds a session with her through her zoom in favor of her pandemic. Ripley and Pascal rehearsed the scene together in Florida (he appeared on a national tour of “Pretty Woman: The Musical”), and the recording of his scene made Pascal look like a bigger person than the real thing. The surreal effect of the show.
“I would like to take the plunge to say that I am now the first actor to play in two different shows at the same time in the United States and Barcelona,” Pascal wrote in an email.
“Next to Normal” is produced by Grec Festival, Layers of Reality, Pablo del Campo, who first saw the musical in 2010 and was fascinated by it. (At the time, he was working as a worldwide creative director for advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, spending time between London and New York.) Diana’s emotional test hit him and he translated the story into another language. He said he felt he needed to translate. He began working on Spanish adaptation during the layover. With his determination, Del Campo immediately sold his ideas directly to the Yorkie, and shortly thereafter, a piece in Spanish titled “Casinormal” appeared on stage in Buenos Aires and was in operation for 10 years.
But that wasn’t the end of Del Campo’s involvement in “Next to Normal.” In early 2020, a few weeks before the Covid-related lockdown began, Del Campo visited an artificial intelligence exhibition at the IDEAL Center d’Arts Digitals de Barcelona, which specializes in the production and exhibition of digital art projects, and he said, “Electro. I experienced what I called a “moment of shock.” .. Seeing the robot translate the text into a visual display, Del Campo envisioned the number “Wish I Were Here,” which Diana sings “when a lightning strikes / and when it burns out in my heart.” Told.
Eventually, Del Campo approached Kit and Yorkie for an immersive production, and surprisingly they agreed to compress a two-act, nearly two-and-a-half-hour musical. Some dialogue scenes have been cut, but all the big musical numbers remain. The British director Simon Pittman Søren Christensen and Tatiana Halbach, who were brought in to oversee the project and work under the name Decilence, created the visuals (including an abstract landscape intended to evoke Diana’s inner state). “Everywhere you turn, there’s something to see,” Christensen said. “It’s like’Dogville’meeting a music video.”
Reflecting the richness of the production images, he added: “If the movie is 4K and the really good looking movie is 8K, this is up to 4x.”
During a recent rehearsal at IDEAL, the cast was practicing the song “Who’s Crazy” / “My Psychopharmacologist and I” about Diana’s drug adjustment. At first, the actor practiced blocking in a completely empty space. After that, a wall-mounted screen was lit, and the actors were taken to a surreal world with clocks ticking, life-sized neurons floating like jellyfish, and tablets resembling colorful raindrops falling from the sky. “I need more pills!” Halbach shouted at some point.
Another element of the space was Ripley’s painful emotional voice.
“When we first made [Diana]I didn’t know what that would be. The audience was watching me understand it live, “said Ripley, looking back at the musical Off-Broadway at the Second Stage Theater in 2008. She said she felt that her experience was confusing at first, but this new piece.
“We actors are told to never turn their backs on the audience,” she said. “And here all those rules are gone.”
The team behind the immersive production found it easy to bring back Tony Award-winning Ripley for Diana’s portrayal, even after 2021. The Daily Beast Report She was accused of “having a sexual conversation with a 13-year-old girl and manipulating the cult and relentless fan base of vulnerable youth.”Ripley later Denied accusation in statement Go to page 6 of the New York Post. “It was a misunderstanding of my behavior to say that I manipulated someone, and even more shockingly, there was abuse,” she wrote in her statement.
During a rehearsal break last month, Ripley said he had no further comments on the accusation.
Musical purists may be pearly at the idea that their beloved Broadway show will be dismantled, but as Pittman said, “we’re doing it. a “Next to Normal.” And Barcelona may be the perfect place for this experiment. After all, it’s the city of Antoni Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, a towering cathedral built since 1882, reminding us that a true masterpiece will never really be completed.
For Pittman, directing one of the biggest shows to date felt like a return to the fringe era in Edinburgh, which began in 2005.
“It’s like being on your stomach,” he added, “I’ve never directed a show that’s building both the process and the venue,” and it was installed in IDEAL to satisfy the production. Mentioned new technology. needs. (According to Del Campo, the show’s budget is close to $ 1.2 million.)
It’s been about 15 years since Ripley first lived in Diana’s character. “Playing Diana is definitely more fun than ever,” Ripley said of her role in production, which lasts until August 14. Something like my hands or heels. “
“I’ve been through hell since I last played Diana,” she said, referring to life-changing events such as the death of her parents and changes in her body and voice. “But this feels incredibly liberated. We are so influenced and come to the theater to influence ourselves.”
