April Rebecca in Next to Normal | Photo by Valentina Caballero
Next to Normal is one of those after-2000 contemporary musicals about mental illness, family dysfunction or a combination of the two, and which have gotten all jumbled up in my mind. I don’t especially love any of them and there’s one I actively despise. For years, I’ve lumped it in with Kimberly Akimbo (it’s fine, I guess, but irritates me) and Dear Evan Hansen (a cloying, irresponsible story I wish was a person so I can slap its obnoxious face). Next to Normal is the one I’ve known the least about, having listened to a couple songs and thought: meh.
I went into Bowtie Productions’ presentation with modest expectations and was astonished at how thoroughly it swept me off my feet. I have some narrative issues with the material, and we’ll get to them, but let me just get this out of the way up front: the vulnerable and emotively charged performances absolutely sell the shit out of this. The whole ensemble is both raw and finely calibrated, thanks in large part to Anthony Goncharov’s stylish, efficient and purposeful direction. Is this his first musical? Dude! It absolutely slaps!
Though not what I consider catchy, I certainly didn’t appreciate them in isolation, the songs work exceptionally well in context. Tom Kitt’s score has solid rock vibes and each number is an effective expression of the characters’ shfiting psychological states. While not quite achieving Sondheim’s giddy cleverness, Brian Yorkey’s lyrics do capture the rhythms of human speech—most specifically, those fraught, erratic, histrionic episodes.
Yorkey’s book tracks the rather ugly—yet also beautiful?—disintegration of a suburban family. Wife and mom, Diana (April Rebecca), suffers from bipolar disorder. The whole family, actually, is tormented by her manic behaviour and their own flawed responses.
Dad and father, Dan (a very sincere Taylor Long), is the character who most irritated me, lacking the fortitude to properly confront the situation and languishing in a perpetual state of concerned yet ineffectual hovering. Daughter Natalie (Aveleigh Keller in a winningly cheeky and angsty mode) is a frantic over-achiever at school, with aspirations to be a classical musician, until she lets herself slip into wayward, drug-addled partying. Her boyfriend Henry (Samel Sunil being very adorable) is an endearing guy who patiently tries to insert himself as a stable port in turbulent waters. Mich Anger, with a poise both practical and full of whimsy, portrays both Dr. Fine (who just prescribes a convoluted cocktail of drugs) and Dr. Madden (a more proactive therapist and something of a rock star).
And then there’s Gabe (Christopher Lyon), the son. His furtive interactions with Diana provide clues early on, but the first act eventually reveals (a spoiler for those who don’t know, but a major aspect of the story I can’t avoid here) that he’s a haunting delusion, a manifestation of the teenager their deceased two-year-old never became—whose death Dan and (more crucially) Diana are still actively grieving. He could so easily be a cloying, too-poetic presence, but Lyon is fully riveting in his urgent and affectionate grasping for purchase amongst the living and Goncharov shows keen theatrical insight and dexterity in his placement of him.
He and movement director Meredith Shedden know exactly where everyone should go here for maximum aesthetic and emotional impact. Honestly, I could go on and on about what an exquisitely executed piece of musical theatre this is. Goncharov also provided the minimalist scenic design, which features simple raised platforms, a couple of swivel chairs and a series of vertical light bars that lighting designer Niall Durcan incorporates into a luminous, moody landscape to visually articulate, with near perfect precision, both subtle and extreme ebbs and flows of the characters’ emotional experience.
Emily Anne Corcoran’s costumes place these people in a tangible context, but it’s her props that really carry the weight of their stressed existence—stored in plastic storage tubs and tucked under those risers, they are the loaded artifacts of life the characters keep fussing with as if they could provide security or insight. Pill bottles take on a sort of mythic significance.
Diana exhibits some absurd behaviours I initially found alienating and a little silly—making sandwiches on the floor, brandishing a birthday cake for her dead son. Once I realized that this story veers unapologetically into melodrama, I embraced the unhinged moments and found them increasingly convincing. And I do genuinely care about Diana as a character, understand her hysterical highs and agonized lows, the choice to go off her meds, her reluctance to be subjected to electroconvulsive therapy—and Rebecca hits every joyful, wild and abject impulse with sincerity and wit.
The story is aware of complex, traumatic, harsh realities and presents them unflinchingly, but… well…
I don’t want to get into the weeds on how the story resolves itself around the central figure of Diana, but I do want to address it. This isn’t Nora from A Doll’s House, extricating herself from patriarchal oppression. Diana is a woman with a fragile mental state, who has proven to be a danger to herself and possibly others. She shouldn’t be “finding herself” out in the wilds of society. That fails her and society and is not, as a story beat, empowering, though book-writer Yorkey seems to think so.
Enough about that.
Next to Normal is very compelling throughout and goes to some rather dark, dire and potentially triggering places. Read up on the content warnings if you’re sensitive to such things and go check out this intense, thoroughly entrancing production. Oh, and I have to give some love to the emotionally climactic moment between Long and Lyon—an intimate spectacle of desperate clutching that was a sucker punch to the feels. It could have been so mawkish, almost is, but they get it right.
Next to Normal
May 30 to June 6, 2026
Native Earth’s Aki Studio
(585 Dundas Street East)
2 hours, 30 minutes (with intermission)
Full company of Next to Normal | Photo by Valentina Caballero