Michael Longhurst’s production of Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2008 rock musical ‘Next to Normal’ transfers to the West End having garnered four Olivier Awards following its UK debut at the Donmar Warehouse last year. It’s an ambitious, at times powerfully affecting, show that – even 16 years after it premiered in the US – still impresses with its desire to stretch the expected subject matter of a musical by tackling mental illness as a central theme.
We meet Diana (Caissie Levy), her husband Dan (Jamie Parker), son Gabe (Jack Wolfe), and daughter Natalie (Eleanor Worthington-Cox), hanging on by a thread. The manic repetition of ‘Just Another Day’ captures the frantic desperation of a family shadowed by Diana’s worsening bipolar disorder: Dan has locked himself into the role of ‘provider’ and thrown away the key; Natalie, feeling invisible, hides in the certainty of Mozart before and after school; and Gabe, ever watchful, flits in and out of Diana’s life. This fractured routine is ultimately pushed to breaking point like a dam bursting.
Where this show unambiguously succeeds is in its sympathetic but clear-sighted depiction of a family buckling under buried grief and an impossible present. Brian Yorkey’s book presents us with clearly-drawn portraits of how people respond differently to trauma. There’s a deftly handled and meaty exploration of how little Western society is prepared to truly face loss, our unwillingness to let go of relationships and the risk of unaddressed, harmful patterns of behaviour becoming a family legacy. As Kitt’s attention-grabbing score and Yorkey’s lyrics wheel through differing genres, we get an aural sense of the characters’ messy kaleidoscope of feelings. Longhurst also sharpens the show’s welcome black humour in its bleakest moments with his vivid staging.
The returning main cast are great. As Diana, Levy captures the palpable fear and frustration of someone who no longer feels in control of their life. Parker walks a line of self-serving stoicism and panic as Dan. Memories and identity are toxically intertwined in their foundering marriage. Worthington-Cox is an every-nerve-exposed ball of anger and jagged vulnerability as ‘invisible girl’ Natalie. Jack Wolfe, meanwhile, demonstrates why he was Olivier nominated and won a bunch of awards as Gabe. He’s a magnetically Puckish presence, an elastic figure of innocence and danger. There’s also good support from Jack Ofrecio as stoner Henry and Trevor Dion Nicholas as Diana’s (in one funny scene, suddenly rockstar) psychotherapist, Dr Fine.
But there are issues with the tidy way that the show suggests mental illness can be overcome. It makes some valid points – which, I suspect, gain greater context from the financially incentivised, privatised US healthcare system – about kneejerk over-medicalisation in the treatment of complex, multi-faceted disorders. But the implication here that ditching the pills and the therapy and ‘facing up to the past’ is the most ‘authentic’ solution feels out of kilter with the show’s compellingly multi-layered outlook elsewhere. Thankfully, a brief, dialogue-free moment introduced at the end complicates this a little. It’s a jarring note in this deeply moving show.