In this week’s Staff Picks, Staff Writer Emma Keates encourages you to give the Next To Normal proshot a shot and Editor-In-Chief Danette Chavez sings the praises of Lido Pimienta’s latest.
Emma Keates: Next To Normal proshot (Great Performances on PBS)
If anyone reading this has a sleeper agent-type response to the words “Superboy And The Invisible Girl,” this one’s for you. I was 14 when Next To Normal first premiered on Broadway, but the Pulitzer and Tony-winning 2009 rock musical left an indelible mark. I never got to see its original run in person, but I used to pore over grainy bootlegs of original stars Alice Ripley and Aaron Tveit running around the stage like someone was paying me to do it. I never would have predicted that over a decade and a half later, the show would be revived on the West End and I would be able to re-experience it (legally!) in a stunning proshot that just aired as part of PBS’ Great Performances series. I have a pretty good feeling I’m not the only one who feels that way.
If you weren’t on musical theater Tumblr in 2009, Next To Normal follows a suburban mother, Diana, suffering from worsening bipolar disorder. Through deeply affecting songs like “You Don’t Know,” “I Am The One,” “I’m Alive,” and “Catch Me I’m Falling,” the show tracks the progression of her illness and its effect on the rest of her family. The West End production—directed by Michael Longhurst and starring Caissie Levy, Jamie Parker, Jack Wolfe, and Eleanor Worthington-Cox—offers a very different, but wholly welcome new perspective on the material. Levy truly makes Diana her own, and Wolfe and Worthington-Cox both turn in nuanced, one-to-watch performances as her teenage son and daughter. The proshot itself is also skillfully captured in a way that makes the dense story and often chaotic staging perfectly accessible to viewers who may be coming to this material for the first time.
Longtime fans of the show may take a few minutes to adjust to Longhurst’s more grounded vision (gone are the sliding purple panels and giant, disembodied eyes), but new details will likely win you over just as quickly. (Although the excessive use of “freakin'” to comply with the FCC regulations remains a bit jarring throughout.) Also, it should be noted that this version of the production contains a rather graphic depiction of self-harm.
Even 16 years later, Tom Kitt (score) and Brian Yorkey’s (book and lyrics) masterpiece remains as urgent and vital as ever. And the proshot isn’t just for Tumblr veterans either; I watched it with my partner who had never seen the show or listened to the cast recording, and he hasn’t stopped humming “I’m Alive” in the two weeks since. You may just want to bring a box of tissues (or five) with you to the couch.
Next To Normal is streaming on PBS until June 30. Make sure you catch it before it goes, and long live public television.
Danette Chavez: La Belleza, Lido Pimienta
Five years after releasing the Grammy-nominated Miss Colombia, Lido Pimienta is back with a new album: the ruminative La Belleza, which has been playing on repeat in my house for the last week. I’d say it marks a significant departure from the more propulsive sounds of her third album, but nothing about Pimienta’s prior work suggested that she’d follow any one track. Miss Colombia was filled with great dance beats and rage, as Pimienta took aim at misogyny and racism—the kinds she’s encountered in the music industry as well as internalized. But it also included moments that pointed to the more stripped-down direction she’d soon head in, which is why the news that she’d been commissioned to score a piece for the New York Ballet’s production of Sky To Hold in 2021was hardly surprising.
The multihyphenate continues to excavate AfroColombian culture and history in La Belleza, pairing soaring vocals with a classical take on dembow, among other inspired fusions. But Pimienta’s hardly rooted in one geographical place or musical genre—drawing a map of her inspirations for her fourth studio albumwould take you to the Caribbean and Italy and the Czech Republic. La Belleza is a gorgeous, syncretic work that recalls Rosalía’s El Mal Querer—not because they’re both Spanish-language albums (though that is part of makes Pimienta lament that her latest will once again be relegated to “world music”), but because of the way that both artists breathe new life to musical traditions from their respective countries. Pimienta wasn’t able to tour behind Miss Colombia due to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and she currently only has one date scheduled for 2025, but I hope she expands that soon because while La Belleza might not have people dancing, it will definitely move them.
