ReportWire

Tag: Next to Normal

  • Kyona Levine Farmer is always looking for a ‘message of redemption’ – Orlando Weekly

    [ad_1]

    The cast of ‘Next to Normal’ Credit: courtesy SparKyL Entertainment

    During this first weekend of October, downtown’s Dr. Phillips Center will echo with the anguished cries of a mourning mother driven into a sanitarium by specters of sorrow. But these haunted house horrors aren’t Gothic fantasies from an earlier era; rather, they’re relatable modern-day struggles faced by the fractured Goodman family in Next to Normal, the Tony-winning 2008 rock musical by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey. Kyona Levine Farmer, a local director and founder of SparKyL Entertainment, recently spoke with me about her latest production upon one of Orlando’s most prestigious stages, and the coast-to-coast journey that brought her there.

    A native of Orlando, Levine Farmer attended Dr. Phillips High School (where she was “super shy”) and majored in English at the University of Florida, before making her way to New York City. “I wanted to write to perform,” says Levine Farmer. “During my day, they didn’t have a lot of stories that I thought were a reflection of the things that I wanted to see, so I pursued writing because I was good at it.” Entering a graduate program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts straight out of undergrad “was an amazing experience for me. Of course, New York will take the shyness out of you.”

    After grad school, a 10-year stint in Los Angeles pursuing an acting career led to her brief return to New York in a friend’s off-Broadway play. “I was amazed by the experience of doing his original work there. And when I got back to L.A., I was like, ‘I can do that,’” recalls Levine Farmer, who then produced a script she’d written in grad school using money saved from her day job. “It was the first time that I produced and directed, and I don’t think that I went back to acting after that. I just love the storytelling element of directing.” 

    Due to a “spiritual feeling that I’m probably not supposed to be [in L.A.] forever”, Levine Farmer returned home to Orlando in 2010, when she presented her play Sweet Evalina at Orlando Shakes and started SparKyL Entertainment, before taking a job teaching theater at a local private school. After meeting her husband, Vince Farmer, the couple began producing shows together, despite his background being more in mathematics and basketball than the arts. “He would always attend the rehearsals when I was teaching,” says Kyona of Vince, “and he’s just really mesmerized by the process of building from start to finish.”

    Following a few fallow years, SparKyL sparked back to life in 2024 with The Color Purple: The Musical, performing in the same Alexis & Jim Pugh Theater where Next to Normal will be this weekend. Affording such a vaunted venue isn’t easy as an independent producer — even after the discounted rental rate offered to 501(c)(3) educational organizations and free rehearsal space at a Maitland church — but Levine Farmer says their focus goes beyond profits. “We don’t have any children, so the things that we would do with having children, we invest in doing things that we love,” she explains. “We just really try to give our best to establish the kind of show that we want to be known for.”

    On the opposite end of the budgetary scale, SparKyL caught my eye at last May’s Orlando Fringe Festival with Bobby Lee Blood, a family drama that Levine Farmer originally created as a one-woman show. Levine Farmer calls her first Fringe experience “extremely, extremely fulfilling,” adding, “I just didn’t know that it would be so much fun to see so much new work, just to be in that atmosphere of artistry.”

    Intriguingly, Bobby Lee Blood featured two different casts: one white-presenting and one African American. “I love new perspectives on stories, [and] there are particular stories that are specific to African Americans, or a certain type of culture or race,” says Levine Farmer. “There are some stories that are universal, [and] I find it fascinating to go into the human perspective of stories that don’t have a specific cultural context.” 

    Similarly, while Next to Normal features a predominately white-presenting cast (with understudies of color) led by Angela Tims and Mathew Nash-Brown as Diana and Dan Goodman, Levine Farmer cites a personal connection to the material that goes deeper than culture. “I am drawn to just a good story,” says Levine Farmer. “Then once my mother and my mother-in-law were diagnosed with dementia, the topic of the show was extremely interesting to us. And when I opened up the casting, I knew that I didn’t want to stick to a specific cultural cast, so I just opened it up to anyone.” 

    The common thread connecting all these culturally diverse works is the “message of redemption” that Levine Farmer says she always looks for in a project. “We want hope, and we want stories that will require a conversation,” Levine Farmer says of her script selection process. “I know I need to do something fun and light, something stupidly funny, because we have been doing tons of shows that are dramas that cause a lot of thought. But they feel most fulfilling to me, the shows that really give people something when they leave.”

    (Next to Normal, Oct. 3-5 at the Alexis & Jim Pugh Theater, Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, $65-$89.)

    Subscribe to Orlando Weekly newsletters.

    Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Bluesky | Or sign up for our RSS Feed

    This article appears in Oct. 1-7, 2025.



    [ad_2]

    Seth Kubersky
    Source link
  • Houston Broadway Theatre Delivers a Stunning Production of Next to Normal at the Hobby Center

    Houston Broadway Theatre Delivers a Stunning Production of Next to Normal at the Hobby Center

    [ad_1]


    The Houston Press wasn’t going to review Houston Broadway Theatre’s production of the Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Next to Normal because its run lasted only one weekend for four performances. A showcase that is so evanescent won’t hit hard, as they say.

    But after seeing the Saturday evening show, attention must be paid. There are still two shows remaining, Sunday matinee and Sunday evening. If there’s room in Zilkha Hall at the Hobby Center run to it. Don’t wait!

    Who the hell is this troupe? And why in hell are they so good?

    Next to Normal is their Houston company debut, and if this is what they can do then, please, bring us more. Much more.

    What a stupendous production – Broadway caliber musical theater of the highest order. Perhaps the band’s volume might be toned down a bit for the singers, but that is the only quibble to be found. Tim Macabee’s physical look is wondrous: modern mesh screens that pivot on casters, projections from Greg Emetaz that wipe across the background and proscenium like Golden Age Hollywood lap dissolves, neon-tinged edges from lighting designer Alan G. Edwards that light up in various colors to set the mood, and glorious performances from all that will knock your socks off.

    The tiny houses seen from above, like a Monopoly board’s houses on steroids, are  the perfect touch. But there are so many perfect touches that it’s difficult to list them. The entire show has the perfect touch.

    No question about it, this is a show as rich in production design and vocal talent as any seen in Houston in seasons. Their mission statement reads in part: “HBT is dedicated to captivating and uplifting the Houston community through the delivery of exceptional and compelling musical theatre productions.” Wow, that promise they deliver in spades.

    Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey’s multiple award-winning musical has a first act curtain like no other. What other show wheels its leading lady into the operating room to undergo electric shock therapy then breaks for intermission? There’s room on the musical stage for almost anything, and Normal (Broadway debut in 2009, after wowing off-Broadway during its 2008 run) takes the subject of manic depression and turns what could be an ultra-downer into as accomplished a piece of musical theater as possible. It’s a deeply moving work, yet highly exhilarating.

    Suburban housewife Diana (Mary Faber in an immaculate, bravura performance as battered and uncomprehending mother) is a mess. She doesn’t know why. She hates her life, has no feelings for her average husband Dan (Constantine Maroulis, of Rock of Ages, Jekyll & Hyde, and American Idol fandom) and doesn’t relate at all to her teenage daughter (Mary Caroline Owens), who’s on the verge of a breakdown herself, barely clinging to the lifeline thrown to her by stoner classmate Henry (Josiah Thomas Randolph).

    Diana pays inordinate attention, though, to her son Gabe (HBT founding member Tyce Green who produced the Broadway revival of The Who’s Tommy), who appears to her almost as if in a dream, popping up behind her and whispering in her ear. She comes alive in his presence. He is her favorite, no doubt about it. But the stress of everyday life is crushing her; the fallout scalds her family. When she makes sandwiches for her kids to take to school and finishes buttering the bread on the floor, there’s no denying the seriousness of her problem.

    The medical establishment in the form of doctors Fine and Madden (Manuel Stark Santos in exceptional voice) is as stymied as Diana’s clueless family. Pills seem useless to calm her relentless furies. When the family’s long-buried secret is revealed during an ordinary family meal (a revelation that arrives with dreadful calm and smacks us in the gut with utter surprise), suicide is attempted. That’s when the terror of electroshock therapy is broached. There’s the possibility of a cure, but that might wipe out Diana’s memories – the only sweet things that keep her grounded.

    Blessed with a stunning contemporary score and bitingly effective lyrics, the show keeps surprising as it returns to past melodies and spins them with ever greater potency. The score is labeled “rock,” but this might have more to do with the high vocal line and powerhouse delivery needed for the songs’ emotional heft. The specter of Sondheim and, especially, late great young turk Jonathan Larson (Rent) swirls throughout, but then so, too, does Rogers and Hammerstein.

    This is Broadway song writing on an exceptionally high plane. Ballads, like “Perfect For You,” sung by Henry and Natalie, or “I Dreamed a Dance,” for Diana and Gabe, are lilting romances, lovely and soft; contrasted to the churning “Make Up Your Mind” or “Superboy and the Invisible Girl,” power anthems with drama and drive. Gabe’s “I’m Alive,” as he seeks to seduce Diane into his orbit and not be forgotten, is terrifically effective, belted by Green as if his life depended upon it. Gabe’s life does.

    HBT’s ensemble is first-rate. Perhaps, more than first-rate. There is no flaw to be found in them anywhere. Their singing, wailing, cooing rocks the rafters. It’s all uplifting and ethereal, powerful and emotional. Directed by theater pro Joe Calarco, with musical direction by Michael Ferrara, and choreography by Hope Easterbrook, Next to Normal is far from normal. It is exceptional!

    Next to Normal has two performances remaining at 1:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sunday, July 28 at Zilhka Hall at the Hobby Center, 800 Bagby. For more information, call 713-315-2525 or visit houstonbroadwaytheatre.com. $32.50 – $132.50.

    [ad_2]

    D. L. Groover

    Source link