Musical comedy is a reliable source of happy endings, so a set of characters that doesn’t fit the happily-ever-after template is both rare and compelling to watch. What if simply surviving is triumph enough? Next to Normal is the story of a loving family with teenage kids: capricious son, perfectionist daughter, overwhelmed father, mentally ill mother. Right — this is not a standard reason to sing and dance, but it leads to remarkable moments in Lost Nation Theater’s empathetic production.
Diana is a housewife who has been controlling her bipolar disorder with medications since it was diagnosed 16 years ago. She’s had two kids and endured a cascade of side effects while her devoted husband has kept hoping for the best. After more failed efforts to tune her medications, Diana secretly decides to stop taking them just as her overachieving daughter, on the brink of high school graduation, starts to date an underachieving boy and experiment with drugs.
Diana’s illness escalates, and the musical does not look away as a suicide attempt prompts consideration of electroconvulsive therapy. While the book and lyrics, by Brian Yorkey, don’t encompass the full impact of Diana’s disorder on her family, we do see multiple perspectives of her husband, son, daughter and daughter’s boyfriend. And hear them, in music by Tom Kitt that sets singers conversing in duets or ruminating in polyphonic songs that overlay each character’s thoughts into an ensemble fusion.
Humor takes the form of snappy lyrics, such as those in Diana’s “Didn’t I See This Movie?” that reference One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Sylvia Plath to sensationalize what the average viewer associates with mental illness. A cutesy number about doctors pushing pills is staged as a silly fantasia, and Diana examines her life through wisecracks. This is no dirge about chronic mental illness.
Yet Next to Normal does not shy away from stark seriousness, and Diana faces impossibly difficult choices throughout. Grim as it gets, the story is fundamentally about people with a will to endure and the ability to grasp joy along the way.
The musical premiered in 2008 and began a successful Broadway run in 2009. It won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, a rare accomplishment for a musical.
Scenic designer Jeff Modereger fills the back of the stage with an asymmetrical staircase that allows director Joanne Greenberg to position the characters as constantly coming, going, connecting or pulling away. The stairs supply energy in movement and paths toward hope or despair.
Greenberg and choreographer Kianna Bromley manage movement powerfully throughout the show, often setting up competing focal points to suggest the breadth of the story. Greenberg succeeds at striking a tricky balance, steering clear of pathos without swinging so far into comedy as to diminish a tragic subject. Pain is always part of the story.
The cast is uniformly strong and works especially well together as singers building the intensity of the score’s woven melodies. Their voices are just plain beautiful in solos, and in ensemble numbers the musical relationships convey more than words can say.
Kathleen Keenan, as Diana, reaches deep to deliver songs and dialogue expressing the extremes of bipolar disorder. Tender one moment and fierce the next, the character lives on the high wire. And Diana will not let any doctor off easy. Mother-son and mother-daughter duets are especially poignant; the score twines the voices, and Keenan harmonizes exquisitely with the other performers.
Jake Thomason, as Diana’s husband, shows the character’s weary yet indefatigable dedication to his wife. Thomason makes the character’s superhero steadfastness believable, but his best scene occurs when cracks begin to show. Nick Wheeler plays Diana’s doctors, shining in a duet in which he beckons her to risk exploring trauma.
Tommy Bergeron plays the son as a confident teenager with a faint touch of childish malice. He’s an ideal all-American boy, save for a seductive ease with risk. As Diana’s daughter, Natalie Steele conveys a character testing neediness, resentment and rebellion as reactions to her mom. Nick Rubano plays the laid-back boyfriend, whose wooing neatly evolves from risk-averse to heartwarmingly sincere.
Musical director Tim Guiles emphasizes the energy in the rock musical score. The characters are continually propelled by music that can explode to frantic outbursts and subside to steady pulses. All the songs fit under the rock-and-roll tent, but Kitt serves a buffet of genres, including an unfortunate stab at arena rock that doesn’t compare with the solidity of the rest of the tunes. When Kitt yields to what works on Broadway, the music succeeds structurally and sonically.
Yorkey’s lyrics often deal in abstract emotions, stranding some tunes on platitudes about “being free” and “beginning to heal.” The gems are the songs that operate as dialogue, sometimes built of counterpoint to contrast the characters, sometimes urgent sung/spoken conversations. The show sizzles as these tunes tell stories.
Greenberg and this strong cast confront a dark disorder without a cure. Some emotional peaks feel like body slams, while moments of connection are truly touching. The musical may simplify mental illness, but it never trivializes it. Next to Normal doesn’t need a happy ending to move audiences.
Next to Normal, music by Tom Kitt, book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey, directed by Joanne Greenberg, produced by Lost Nation Theater. Through October 19: Thursday through Saturday, 7:30 p.m.; and Sunday, 2 p.m., at Montpelier City Hall. $15-47. lostnationtheater.org
The original print version of this article was headlined “Side Effects | Theater review: Next to Normal, Lost Nation Theater”