Next to Normal Provides Deep Catharsis

By intermission, there was nary a dry female eye surrounding me in the audience of last night's performance of Next to Normal at Broadway's Booth Theatre. It wasn't surprising that Tom Kitt's musical about the effects of a mother's bipolar on her family and self would have such an effect. After all, it did win the 2010 Pulitzer for drama, an accolade that is seldom bestowed on musicals. But Next to Normal is not your typical musical. It doesn't seek to transport you away from your problems to Oz, or the African jungles. Nor does it allow you to indulge in your favorite artists such as Frank Sinatra, Franki Valli, or even Green Day. Rather, Next to Normal forces audiences to dive inward and plumb the depths of their own emotions. In this way, it's more similar to a play than a typical musical.

Next to Normal is set in a typical American suburb during contemporary times. It opens with a "Just Another Day," where the mother, Diana (Marin Mazzie), sings "They're the perfect loving family, so adoring/And I love them every day of every week." Of course, this is the first sign that they're not the perfect loving family. The opening number ends with Diana making sandwiches on the floor. Her daughter Natalie (Meghann Fahy) storms off to leave her dad (Jason Danieley) to deal with this latest outburst. But this is no Desperate Housewives cliche of the soccer mom driven crazy by an boredom and routine. We soon learn that the source of Diana's angst is her son's death--sixteen years ago. She now imagines her son (Kyle Dean Massey) as a seventeen year old stomping around the house.

The major plot here, then, is how Diana treats her illness, and whether or not she can let go of the major cause -- her imagined son. Along the way, York also incorporates criticism of the medication of mental illness.The darkly funny piece entitled "My Psycho-pharmacologist And I," follows Diana through seven weeks of trying drug cocktails. In the background, the other characters sing "Zoloft and Paxil...Xanax and Prozac...these are a few of my favorite pills!" After seven weeks Diana tells the doctor, "I don't feel like myself. I don't feel anything," to which the good doc replies "Patient stable.

But Next to Normal is not a groundbreaking critique of the pharmaceutical industry. Its strength lies in its emotional depth and clarity. The two major relationships are between Diana and her husband Dan, and between Diana and Natalie. Diana's husband has been supportive all these years, but now must confront the fact that he may be enabling his wife. The chemistry is palpable between real-life couple Marin Mazzie and Jason Danieley throughout. Most poignant is a duet in which Dan explains why he's stayed with Diana through all these years of mental illness. It's entirely believable by this point that a husband would stay so steadfastly by, driven by a complex mixture of love and commitment. The duet asks audiences to think of their own commitments. Is there anyone you would stay by through decades of mental illness?

The relationship between mother and daughter is rarely explored in this way in musical theater. Natalie has essentially been ignored for her entire life as her mother obsesses over her dead brother, and her father obsesses over her mother. Now when her classmate Henry (Adam Chanler-Berat) wants to date her, she cannot handle all the attention. How Natalie juggles her hatred, and her longing for her mother at the same time is beautifully shown through her defensive persona. Natalie is given many sarcastic lines, which Fahy delivers well. It's enough to remind the audience of their own insecurities as well.

Next to Normal has been criticized for being too serious. This is a good thing. I hope that this production's seriousness will inspire more thinking-person's musicals on Broadway.