Next to Normal
My grandmother's birthday present to me and my sister (and my brother until he lost interest) is always to take us to a show. This year, I asked for tickets to the new show on Broadway, Next to Normal.
She was having issues getting tickets for mine this year, and then it went and got nominated for a bunch of Tony Awards (including Best Musical) and won (among others) Best Original Score, so they were even more impossible to get. But the beginning of this month, she finally got them, but instead said I could use the two she bought to bring my boyfriend instead of her (I think she's just getting old and didn't want to have to walk around the city). Which he was more than happy to. So, this past weekend, me and him saw it.
It was amazing. Although brough back some unpleasent memories, but ones I needed to deal with (for those who don't know, the main premise of the show is a mother who has a severe case of bipolar disorder and the effect it has on her family). The music was fantastic, seriously, check out the soundtrack. The plot was actually rather unpredictable, though with plenty of interesting twists. It was at times hilarious, as well as incredibly scary and sad. Everything was not nicely fixed up at the end, but there was some hope in it. The show dealt with an incredibly difficult mental disorder, without using medication as the cure-all, nor did it completely bash and attack modern medicine either.
My favorite songs are: "You Don't Know/I Am the One" (which was performed at the Tony Awards), "I'm Alive", and "Superboy and the Invisible Girl." But seriously, the entire soundtrack is amazing.
By far, the most interesting and emotive character in the whole show was Gabe. His voice (although I don't think we had Aaron Tveit, the original actor at our performance because he happened to be doing something else at the time we saw it, but the guy we had was very similar in appearance and voice) and acting reminded me a HELL of a lot of Lucas Grabeel (if he ever wants to break into theatre, I think he'd do an amazing job in this). However, the character himself, it reminded me a lot of Jet from Avatar, if he was a ghost or something similar to what Gabe is.
Anyway, I highly reccomend to everyone to check out the show (or if you can't, at least the soundtrack), it's amazing.