Steven Stanley from StageSceneLA felt the feels at Next to Normal:
Steven Stanley from StageSceneLA felt the feels at Read full review' | Buy Tickets | More about 'Next to Normal'Wow!
“Jocelyn A. Brown delivers one of the year’s most stunning performances”
“As deep and dramatic and gripping as the best contemporary two-act play (Yorkey wrote the musical’s Tony Award-nominated book), Next To Normal features a Tony-winning score (music by Kitt, lyrics by Yorkey) that combines rock rhythms, catchy melodies, and clever, insightful lyrics.”
“All of this adds up to a 21st-century musical that leaves an audience entertained, shaken, better informed about mental illness, and profoundly moved … and never more so than at the Chance, where Matthew McCray’s directorial choices are the very definition of inspired.”
“Baham and Chavez make such impressive Chance Theater debuts as the Goodman siblings that I’d be literally singing their praises if I had anything close to the gifted twosome’s thrilling pipes, and they’ve got acting chops to match. Machado makes for the most appealing of nerd-next-door Romeos to Chavez’s initially resistant Juliet, Chance favorite Hastings delivers a finely-tuned, gorgeously sung supporting turn as two incisively differentiated psychiatrists, and Brown provides stalwart support as a man doing his best to cope under some very difficult circumstances.”
“Still, this is Jocelyn A. Brown’s Next To Normal all the way, her first Chance musical since The Last Five Years and Into The Woods way back in 2006, a performance so memorable I can’t help but wish we hadn’t had to wait a dozen years for her to once again dazzle as she did as Cathy and The Witch way back when. The role of Diana is designed for star turns like a Tony-winning Alice Ripley’s on Broadway and at the Ahmanson, and Brown’s is one you can’t take your eyes off. As an actress, she nails all of Diana’s wants and needs and hopes and fears, and the idiosyncrasies that make her as easy to love as she is frustrating to live with, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard the role sung more sensationally.
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