How does God decide who gets which body? What is it that dictates whether someone is considered normal or abnormal? Indeed, how is it that someone comes to consider themselves as normal or abnormal?These are all questions which Hennie Van Greunens play Normality throws up. Based on her sister, who grew up with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis (JRA), our protagonist Alex Miller is heavily disabled or crippled as he consistently refers to himself throughout the piece. It takes him up to an hour to get out of bed, have a shower and get dressed each morning, while activities such as swimming and dancing are considered out of the question. Pedro Kruger literally inhabits the role of Alex, in addition to the other characters in the piece. It is an exceptional performance believable, funny and left me feeling like I had seen a whole ensemble of actors.The play is punctuated by songs as if to signify the repeating mantra inside Alexs head, as long as the music plays inside my head, everything is OK, while the narrative is a simple yet beautiful one; after meeting a journalist, Alex falls in love, grapples with the emotion and uncertainty of it all and is finally rewarded by a proposal that he can neither believe nor refuse. As he sings Hold me for eternity towards the end of the play, I was not the only one to be moved close to tears. I felt like I had been taken on a journey, given a truthful and honest insight into what it must be like to live with such a visually affecting disease, and then witnessed and felt for myself the joy and uplifting feeling as Alex became no longer the outsider. My only real reservation with the piece is that it is performed in the highly unsuitable Ace Dome which seems more geared towards cabaret than hard hitting drama, but this problem will be, to some extent, nullified when the production gets the sort of audiences it deserves.Contrary to what the title suggests, this piece is far from normal. It is quite simply exceptional. Normality is, after all, in the eye of the beholden.
