#dan goodman

[alex-sondheimsversion]

“I’m gay” “I’m straight” “I’m trans”

Ok and I’m alive??? I’m alive??? I am so alive??? And I feed on the fear that’s behind your eyes??? And I need you to need me it’s no surprise??? I’m alive??? So alive??? I’m alive???

[dasiesanddarkness]

the way Superboy and The Invisible Girl is Natalie literally begging her parents to see her pain and give her the support and love she needs but both of them dismiss it because in their eyes Diana is doing worse and requires more support

and in I’m Alive when Dan says “it isnt always about your comfort, it’s about helping your mother” and Natalie says “as always” because it has never been about her comfort, it has always been about helping Diana and she has always been left to figure it out on her own

and then in Song of Forgetting when Natalie hugs Dan, initiating contact with someone other than Henry for the first (and i think only) time in the show because she’s in so much pain because her mother forgot who she was and he hugs her back until Diana starts to remember when they met and then he pulls away and once again doesn’t offer her the support she needs because he’s too focused on Diana

and how throughout the show Natalie still acts as her mother’s protector (“that’s bullshit, she trusts you!” right before Didn’t I See This Movie, yelling at her dad when he breaks the music box, and driving her to the hospital during I’m Alive reprise) because she still cares about her so much and wishes she would get better so she can have a good relationship with her

and at the end right after I Am The One reprise when she walks in and Dan starts sobbing and she becomes the one that takes care of him by reassuring him and turning on the lights because she knows that he needs it and she’s so used to putting her own pain on hold

the way Natalie struggles the entire fucking show and it’s always second to her parents’ struggles

[floweringophelias]

some of the genuinely greatest casting ever

[whencartoonsruletheworld]

Next to Normal 2024 West End Proshot + things i said out loud while watching it

[ahhcloudy]

shoutout the goodman family

[rowan-on-the-moon]

so uh. how about that blocking in the next to normal proshot

[copykangaroo]

Jack Wolfe deciding they wanted to play Gabe as a real person with real emotions is I think objectively the best choice. like I don’t think Gabe is real at all, but we see Gabe from Diana’s perspective for most of the musical and to Diana he is a real person with real emotions, so it makes sense to play him that way and when we don’t see him from Diana’s perspective (in songs like “I’ve Been” and “I Am The One (Reprise)”) the emotions that Gabe portrays (sadness and guilt in “I’ve Been” and anger and desperation in “I Am The One (Reprise)”) are those of Dan. They’re all the feelings that Dan has actively been repressing showing you that Gabe is grief personified. like i feel as though if Gabe were played as simply a device for Diana’s mental illness or as purely sort of sinister and vindictive, it takes away the fact that navigating mental illness and grief is extremely difficult and by Gabe being portrayed as a real person it makes it easier for the audience to see why the Goodmans make the choices they do and sympathize with them rather than it being clear when something is a “bad” choice because we have been viewing Gabe as sinister and simply Diana’s illness.

[kitschy-gillyflowers]

Does anyone else think about Gabe Goodman? Not the one we see in the show, but the one Dan and Diana lost.

The 8 month old who never got to grow up. The toddler who was in so much pain and had no way of communicating it except crying. The one who left his toy car and his music box behind one day, and never returned.

The scene where Diana cries into his baby onesie always breaks my heart because it reminds the audience that the Gabe we see isn’t really their son. The son they lost was so small, so tiny. He was not an Aaron Tveit or a Jack Wolfe. He wasn’t even a toddler.

The Gabe we see is a visual representation of grief (or a hallucination, depending), but he is not the child they lost. That child is gone. Teen Gabe is just a guess at who that child could have been, and the jarring reality is that no one will ever know.

It’s ironic that for how prominent of a role Gabe’s death plays in the plot, his actual life is eclipsed by both the life he never lived, and by his death.