Review - Looking For Normal, Artisphere Theatre, Theater Garage, Minneapolis
So, I flew to MSP this past weekend to go see "Looking For Normal", produced by my friends' company Artisphere. My friends Sally and Fred have been trying to get this thing up for over 5 years, and approached Fifty Foot Penguin with it at one point. Zach was going to direct, but we didn't have the money and had to back out. Sal & Fred didn't give up and finally, with the help of Terry Lynn and Beth Carlson, produced it themselves. It was worth the wait.

"Looking For Normal" deals with a middle-aged couple in a small Ohio town. They've been married for 25 years, have two children, and seem like the most traditional of traditional Middle American couples. In a counseling session with their pastor, the husband, Roy, reveals that he was born in the wrong body and wishes to change his sex - to become a woman. The rest of the play deals with the reverberations created by that particular bombshell. Fred plays Roy and Sally plays Irma, Roy's loving and patient wife - the interaction between these two is where the play really came alive for me. Mo Perry as Roy's grandmother who left her son (Roy's father) to live as a crossdresser in Paris provides the spiritual side of the play, and Garry Geiken and John Middleton as the pastor and Roy's supervisor, respectively, represent the community's response. But watching Fred and Sal up there as Roy and Irma - damn. At one point, the pastor gives Irma permission to divorce Roy, and Irma responds, "Why? He's my heart." This is true for Roy and Irma as well as Fred and Sally.

Randy Schmeling and Taylor Bolstad are absolutely engaging as Roy & Irma's children, and Anita O'Sullivan and Larry Roupe do a very good job of showing us the older generation's perspective.

(Side note: due to my own issues, I lost it when Roy-now-Ruth gently kisses the top of his dad's head as she wheels him away. It was just so perfect and poignant, it killed me.)

After the show, Mo said that doing this kind of theater is what will feed her artistic soul for years to come. I know what she means - it was absolutely worth waiting five years and flying 2000 miles to see the show. You should go see it, too.