NYT: An Evolving Portrait of Anguish
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hesJune 7, 2009
An Evolving Portrait of Anguish
By BRUCE WEBER
THE actress Alice Ripley lives on Long Island, and not long ago she was on her way to work at the Booth Theater on Broadway when she broke her index finger, catching it in a train station door.
“The train had pulled in, and it happened just then,” she recalled over lunch in the theater district recently, a splint on her right hand complicating her use of a soup spoon. “I wanted to scream and cry, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to be embarrassed by screaming out loud, and I decided to hold it all in. And I bent over, and I thought I was going to pass out. Or throw up. And I thought: ‘This is it. This is how Diana feels on her drugs. Everything is inside her, and nothing is coming out.’ ”
Diana, that is Diana Goodman, is the character Ms. Ripley is inhabiting, the bipolar wife and mother at the center of the musical “Next to Normal.” Anyone who has seen Ms. Ripley’s nakedly anguished performance will be aware of Diana’s intense and intimate relationship with pain.
It’s a portrayal of mental illness that has been evolving for more than a year, beginning with the show’s first incarnation Off Broadway at Second Stage Theater and continuing through a second production at the Arena Stage in Washington. Ms. Ripley’s research for the part included reading extensively about depression in general and psychopharmacology in particular, as well as the observation of and interaction with people close to her, a favorite uncle and her personal assistant, Lisa Kasamoto, who are both bipolar. Revelations continue to be delivered by daily life, so she’s still tweaking, she said.
“And now, I come out after the show, and one out of five people at the stage door is bipolar,” she said. “I meet them every night, and I hear their stories.”
With a bristling, largely rock ’n’ roll score by Tom Kitt and a book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey that address mental illness and its brutal erosion of a family’s bonds, “Next to Normal” is a show with a strange alchemy. It has sent some unsuspecting theatergoers who thought they were in for a frivolous good time to the exits at intermission, but it usually brings those who remain until the final curtain to their feet. The reviews have been sterling, and the show received 11 Tony nominations, including one for Ms. Ripley.
The striking thing about the role of Diana, who is onstage more or less throughout, is that her persistent emotional crisis is communicated especially in song. After all, stage characters in a cocoon of grief don’t generally sing about the cocoon, but that’s the essence of Ms. Ripley’s task. She’s in 24 of the show’s 38 musical numbers. It’s hard to imagine that any Broadway performer has spent more time onstage singing and crying simultaneously.
“It takes practice,” Ms. Ripley said.
Michael Greif, the show’s director, said he thought Ms. Ripley’s musical training actually gave her an advantage in the role. Singing itself is emotionally risky, he said, and singers are trained to deal with it. “Singers have a leg up because of their breathing,” he said. “The act of singing opens up the actor’s instrument so extraordinarily that the access to emotion is freed. And Alice’s connection to the material was profound from the beginning, so that mostly what we talked about was how Diana’s anguish had to be checked, about what would keep her from letting it all out of the box.”
In person she comes across as half-rocker half-soccer mom. A fit, pretty woman with reddish hair, a light complexion and wide eyes that onstage seem perpetually pried open and apprehensive, Ms. Ripley, 45, was born in California and reared in Pennsylvania, Ohio and elsewhere in a combined family that she calls “my own ‘Next to Normal’ story.” She was the middle child of five, but before she turned 10, her father fell in love with her mother’s best friend, who was also married with five children and lived in the same cul-de-sac.
“When everything kind of hit the fan, my dad married Jo Anne, and suddenly there were five kids from the Ripleys and five kids from the Doughertys,” she said. “Then my dad and Joanne had a baby. I usually have to make a diagram.”
She still calls her stepmother her mom and her real mother her mother, “just to keep them straight.” The family has made an uneasy peace, she said, and as the middle child — “I’m kind of a double middle child” — she’s the one who gets along with everybody. “That’s how I ended up onstage,” she said. “Just wanting to get my dad’s attention.”
She attended DePauw University in Indiana and later graduated from Kent State in Ohio, then moved to San Diego, where she received her equity card. She came to New York in the early 1990s, stopping in Nashville, where she met Shannon Ford, a drummer, whom she married. They play in a punk rock band together when she’s not performing in theater.
“Diana denies that she’s a mother, and she’s also a narcissist,” Ms. Ripley said. “Now I come from a long line of narcissists. And I also have no kids — by choice, but I understand not being a mother and the pain that comes from that.”
She was Tony-nominated once before, as half of a pair of conjoined twins in the 1997 musical “Side Show.” (She shared the nomination with her “sister,” Emily Skinner.) But she said this performance is one she’d never have been capable of before now. “I’m living her all the time,” she said of Diana. “I’ve tried to turn the volume down when I come offstage, but I don’t know.”
She seemed to realize how that sounded. It’s not that she feels imbued with Diana’s illness, she said, rather that she has discovered the part of Diana that is healthy, a wildness, an untamed spirit. “Along the way she makes these choices that I’d be proud to make for myself,” Ms. Ripley said.
“Next to Normal” may be unflinching about the withering effects of Diana’s suffering, but she’s still around at the end.
“I started by thinking of her as someone with a disorder,” Ms. Ripley said. “I look at her now, and there’s nothing wrong with her. I think that tells me I’m on the inside.”
An Evolving Portrait of Anguish
By BRUCE WEBER
THE actress Alice Ripley lives on Long Island, and not long ago she was on her way to work at the Booth Theater on Broadway when she broke her index finger, catching it in a train station door.
“The train had pulled in, and it happened just then,” she recalled over lunch in the theater district recently, a splint on her right hand complicating her use of a soup spoon. “I wanted to scream and cry, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to be embarrassed by screaming out loud, and I decided to hold it all in. And I bent over, and I thought I was going to pass out. Or throw up. And I thought: ‘This is it. This is how Diana feels on her drugs. Everything is inside her, and nothing is coming out.’ ”
Diana, that is Diana Goodman, is the character Ms. Ripley is inhabiting, the bipolar wife and mother at the center of the musical “Next to Normal.” Anyone who has seen Ms. Ripley’s nakedly anguished performance will be aware of Diana’s intense and intimate relationship with pain.
It’s a portrayal of mental illness that has been evolving for more than a year, beginning with the show’s first incarnation Off Broadway at Second Stage Theater and continuing through a second production at the Arena Stage in Washington. Ms. Ripley’s research for the part included reading extensively about depression in general and psychopharmacology in particular, as well as the observation of and interaction with people close to her, a favorite uncle and her personal assistant, Lisa Kasamoto, who are both bipolar. Revelations continue to be delivered by daily life, so she’s still tweaking, she said.
“And now, I come out after the show, and one out of five people at the stage door is bipolar,” she said. “I meet them every night, and I hear their stories.”
With a bristling, largely rock ’n’ roll score by Tom Kitt and a book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey that address mental illness and its brutal erosion of a family’s bonds, “Next to Normal” is a show with a strange alchemy. It has sent some unsuspecting theatergoers who thought they were in for a frivolous good time to the exits at intermission, but it usually brings those who remain until the final curtain to their feet. The reviews have been sterling, and the show received 11 Tony nominations, including one for Ms. Ripley.
The striking thing about the role of Diana, who is onstage more or less throughout, is that her persistent emotional crisis is communicated especially in song. After all, stage characters in a cocoon of grief don’t generally sing about the cocoon, but that’s the essence of Ms. Ripley’s task. She’s in 24 of the show’s 38 musical numbers. It’s hard to imagine that any Broadway performer has spent more time onstage singing and crying simultaneously.
“It takes practice,” Ms. Ripley said.
Michael Greif, the show’s director, said he thought Ms. Ripley’s musical training actually gave her an advantage in the role. Singing itself is emotionally risky, he said, and singers are trained to deal with it. “Singers have a leg up because of their breathing,” he said. “The act of singing opens up the actor’s instrument so extraordinarily that the access to emotion is freed. And Alice’s connection to the material was profound from the beginning, so that mostly what we talked about was how Diana’s anguish had to be checked, about what would keep her from letting it all out of the box.”
In person she comes across as half-rocker half-soccer mom. A fit, pretty woman with reddish hair, a light complexion and wide eyes that onstage seem perpetually pried open and apprehensive, Ms. Ripley, 45, was born in California and reared in Pennsylvania, Ohio and elsewhere in a combined family that she calls “my own ‘Next to Normal’ story.” She was the middle child of five, but before she turned 10, her father fell in love with her mother’s best friend, who was also married with five children and lived in the same cul-de-sac.
“When everything kind of hit the fan, my dad married Jo Anne, and suddenly there were five kids from the Ripleys and five kids from the Doughertys,” she said. “Then my dad and Joanne had a baby. I usually have to make a diagram.”
She still calls her stepmother her mom and her real mother her mother, “just to keep them straight.” The family has made an uneasy peace, she said, and as the middle child — “I’m kind of a double middle child” — she’s the one who gets along with everybody. “That’s how I ended up onstage,” she said. “Just wanting to get my dad’s attention.”
She attended DePauw University in Indiana and later graduated from Kent State in Ohio, then moved to San Diego, where she received her equity card. She came to New York in the early 1990s, stopping in Nashville, where she met Shannon Ford, a drummer, whom she married. They play in a punk rock band together when she’s not performing in theater.
“Diana denies that she’s a mother, and she’s also a narcissist,” Ms. Ripley said. “Now I come from a long line of narcissists. And I also have no kids — by choice, but I understand not being a mother and the pain that comes from that.”
She was Tony-nominated once before, as half of a pair of conjoined twins in the 1997 musical “Side Show.” (She shared the nomination with her “sister,” Emily Skinner.) But she said this performance is one she’d never have been capable of before now. “I’m living her all the time,” she said of Diana. “I’ve tried to turn the volume down when I come offstage, but I don’t know.”
She seemed to realize how that sounded. It’s not that she feels imbued with Diana’s illness, she said, rather that she has discovered the part of Diana that is healthy, a wildness, an untamed spirit. “Along the way she makes these choices that I’d be proud to make for myself,” Ms. Ripley said.
“Next to Normal” may be unflinching about the withering effects of Diana’s suffering, but she’s still around at the end.
“I started by thinking of her as someone with a disorder,” Ms. Ripley said. “I look at her now, and there’s nothing wrong with her. I think that tells me I’m on the inside.”