This role is anything but Normal for Lyon

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BRUCE MONK PHOTO Lyon (in scene from Next to Normal) says playing Diana �is a role of a lifetime.�

According to her lengthy resume, Jennifer Lyon has played many of the iconic roles in musical theatre, including My Fair Lady's Eliza Doolittle, Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls and Lina Lamont in Singin' in the Rain. As Mrs. Walker, she starred in the $6-million Canadian premiere production of The Who's Tommy and performed the much-travelled Comet in Moominland in New York City for the Manitoba Theatre for Young People.

Over 25 years in the stage spotlight, the daughter of late Manitoba premier Sterling Lyon has never been a leading lady who gives in to cheap embellishment to hype her latest show. Yet here she sits for a recent interview, over the moon, declaring her newest part a career topper.

"This is a role of a lifetime," the 46-year-old singer says. "I jokingly call this my swan song because I could die happy tomorrow knowing I had been given this opportunity to play Diana in Next to Normal."

In case you haven't been paying attention, Next to Normal, which opens tonight at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, is Broadway's first musical about manic depression. The central character Diana suffers from bi-polar disorder and her family has been trying to live as close to normal as it can with an illness that resists the usual drugs and psychotherapy.

Next to Normal is an envelope-pusher. Few ever imagined that a rock musical with songs that rhyme Xanax and Prozac would rock. It won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for drama -- only the eighth musical to be so recognized and the first since Rent -- for the American composing team of Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt, who were lauded for expanding the scope and subject of musicals. It also scored three 2009 Tony Awards, including one for Alice Ripley, who portrayed Diana.

Lyon remembers in detail the night Ripley won, as she was watching the Tony Awards on TV. She was walking across her living room carrying a tray of appetizers when Carrie Fisher introduced the Next to Normal cast. She listened to Ripley's number You Don't Know and before the award show was over had downloaded the soundtrack.

"I listened to most of it that night and I said to myself, 'I have to play that part,'" says Lyon, who played Betty Haynes in Irving Berlin's White Christmas at RMTC last season. "I've never had that reaction to any show ever in my life."

When RMTC artistic director Steven Schipper decided to make Next to Normal part of its 2011-12 season, he did so with Lyon, as Diana, in mind. There was no audition, she was "gifted" the part early last year. At the 2011 RMTC season launch event for the media, Lyon wowed with the beautiful ballad I Miss the Mountains from Next to Normal.

"It was a no-brainer," says director Robb Paterson. "Steven and I both saw Alice Ripley and thought, 'Wouldn't Jennifer be perfect?'"

With her casting came the realization of the role's heavy responsibility and emotional toll. Lyon had eight songs when she was Eliza in My Fair Lady. In Next to Normal Diana has 23. The tears and the trauma exacted a price from Ripley who, after her Broadway run, starred in the North American tour that ended in Toronto. She reported that it took a significant amount of her free time to recover from playing Diana and then prepare to do it again.

"She was this open, raw vessel on stage, so I knew what I would have to be," says Lyon, who saw Ripley in Next to Normal in Minneapolis last year. "I've always been the kind of actor who can turn my character on and off. For me, it's a healthier approach. Were I to be all method about this, it would not be emotionally healthy.

"It's hard to tap into that dark side -- the grief, the extreme emotions."

In preparation, Lyon organized a one-woman Next to Normal boot camp for which she upped the intensity and frequency of her workouts. It involved interval training six days a week and singing daily with vocal coach Margery Koop. There was also a lot of research, during which she learned that one in five Canadians (21.3 per cent) will suffer a mental disorder in their lives.

"People who are affected by mental illness are not all savants or a Rain Man or someone with A Beautiful Mind," says Lyon, who studied theatre at the University of Winnipeg and York University in Toronto. "They're not always extraordinary with mystical talents. They are regular, everyday folks."Mental illness has touched a lot of families and Next to Normal has been admired for bringing those struggles to light and to some catharsis. The successful wedding of a serious social issue to pop entertainment is not something you see every day.

That motivates Lyon like never before.

"This pushes me beyond the extreme," she says. "It's kicking my ass, to put it bluntly, but I love to sink my teeth into big challenges. No, I haven't had enough of those in my career. I hope I have other opportunities in the future, but I got one."

kevin.prokosh@freepress.mb.ca

Theatre preview

Next to Normal

Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre

Opens Thursday, to May 12

Tickets: $28-$78 at 942-6537 or www.mtc.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 19, 2012 D3