Because of popular demand, Hilo Community Players’ production of “Next to Normal” will play for two additional performances at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday in the upstairs theater at the East Hawaii Cultural Center.
“Next to Normal” is a powerful rock musical that grapples with the subject of mental illness in a suburban family. The production has been playing to appreciative audiences for three weekends and, because of the enthusiastic reception, HCP announced the special two-night extension.
Hilo Community Players also is reaching out to the recent lava-flow evacuees in Puna and offering them complimentary tickets to either show for an evening of first-class theater as a gift during this difficult time.
Opening on Broadway in 2009 and winning the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for drama (becoming the eighth musical ever to receive the honor), “Next to Normal” is an unflinching look at family secrets and the crazy adjustments people make to keep going on with their lives.
“We are extremely fortunate in Hawaii not to have suffered mass shootings in our schools and public places — yet life in paradise comes with its own challenges,” said Randal McEndree, the show’s assistant producer. “Our great success in bringing together so many different cultures and ethnicities does not erase the fact that we are all fragile — it’s just that some of us are courageous enough to show it.
“This musical play invites us into the inner workings of a family and the show allows us to see how the family struggles with the death of a child, with the secrets that rise up around that death, with life itself. Because the people onstage aren’t us, we are a step removed from their drama.
“This is the heart of theater: We are able to work through our own problems by experiencing actors work through theirs. When the community comes together — as an audience, as an acting company— our individual problems have a place to heal.”
Tickets are $20 and on sale online at www.hiloplayers.org or at the door. Discount tickets are available for $17 each for group bookings of 10 people or more.
Hilo Community Players, operating since 1938, is one of the state’s oldest community theater groups.
For more information, email hilocommunityplayers@gmail.com or call 442-268-0891.
