family part 1: next to normal

last week mk (my bwf), and my owf and i went out to the theater. i am ashamed to admit, as a degree holder in theater and a former actress (former not for long, hopefully), that i hadn't seen anything since i'd moved here four months ago. not for lack of loving it, but s isn't a big theater goer, and it's not as much fun for me to go alone. (though i have--i sobbed by myself through an incredible production of "long day's journey into night" a few years ago with vanessa redgrave, brian dennehy, phillip seymour hoffman and robert sean leonard.)

my owf made the plans (she's a big-time planner) and got us tickets to next to normal, a new off-broadway show about a dysfunctional family dealing with depression and a past death. it was a rock opera, which i have a love-hate relationship with. i love those big goofy rock numbers with their musical theater geeks belting out the lyrics, but i also have to laugh at them, doing their pigeon-toed graspy-hand song-emoting (you know the kind, it's the "rent" cliche, twisting their bodies in as they get more expressive, the minimalist rock opera opposite of the joyful arms-and-legs-splay of precursors like "oklahoma!") anyways, the music is good, good enough that songs still are popping into my head, and the acting was done very well by the husband and wife, and reasonably well by the daughter and her boyfriend and the dead son, and not very well at all by the doctor (who did not work at all as a rockstar in a fantasy sequence.) the set design was great, if a little spare, but every piece worked and helped to create some really interesting stage pictures. (i especially liked the song in which she is getting electro-shock therapy--told you it was about mental health--and she was standing straight up and it was as if she was on the operating table, and they other actors laid down so that the audience seemed to get the view from above.) the band was onstage, always a nice touch, especially since the pianist was really rocking out. i enjoyed it, it was a fun night at the theater.

it of course got me thinking about my own dysfunctional family. i adored my family, don't mistake me. i think they are great and wonderful and i love them and they love me, but i can also see them as human beings, and recognize their flaws, and i drive them crazy and they drive me crazy. i get along really really well with my parents, my mom is one of my best friends, and i can talk to them both about anything and everything. my sister and i have had huge fights, but i am in awe of her and her creative passion, and i don't believe she actually thinks i am boring. my family has struggled through a lot of things that have certainly helped define who i am and how i think about and respond to the world, including dealing with depression and mental health problems. so it was interesting to watch this kind of a show, to see such lives and problems lived out onstage. i felt that the show dealt with it as delicately as possible, not taking sides, not making crazy seem crazy. but it was still a little hard for me to watch, and i felt myself unwilling to discuss it with my audience mates, especially after my owf made a comment about how she didn't really understand why someone who suffers from depression would want to go off their medication even if they felt it was dulling the edges a little. (which i suppose goes back to the argument about creative types not wanting to medicate for fear of losing the creativity.) i think we always respond to what we can identify with onstage (unless it's pure spectacle, like those skyscraper puppets in "the lion king"), and i responded to a lot of the show in ways that i know my friends did not.

anyway, it got me thinking, that's all. and i had more to say, but i saw it awhile ago, and i've thunk my thinks already.