Content warning: mental illness, grief, suicide, and substance abuse.
What do you get when you mix A Doll’s House and late 2000s rock musicals? The Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical drama Next to Normal.
Bare Productions’ Next to Normal is making a stunning debut in Scotland after its time on Broadway and the West-end; it opens the door of a suburban home, allowing the audience to step into an intimate exploration of family relationships, grief and a failing psychiatric help system.
We open on Diana (Brikaih Flore) worrying about her teen son Gabe (Zac McGuire). As the house awakens, we’re introduced to her daughter Natalie (Kelsey MacKenzie) and her husband Dan (Greg McCafferty-Thomson). After a few mishaps ranging from the goofy (Diana announcing she’s going to sleep with Dan) to the worrying (Diana erratically making sandwiches on the floor), she finds herself at a pharmacy, being given endless pills for bipolar disorder. The musical comes to a halt after this, as the severity of Diana’s bipolar disorder is revealed. The rest of the narrative follows a family on a downward spiral, attempting to reckon with a past they miss yet fear and struggling with suicide, drugs, and Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).
Although the set is minimal, the stellar cast replicate the claustrophobia felt by Diana, with Flore and MacKenzie standing out in their portrayal of a strained mother-daughter relationship, amplified by Diana’s bipolar disorder. Their lives run parallel: both fall in love at a young age and struggle with their pasts and feelings of hopelessness, adding a layer of nuance to their relationship. Their final interaction depicts this; they acknowledge Diana’s failings while also empathizing with each other’s struggles.
With an award-winning soundtrack, the music speaks (or sings) for itself. However, the more poignant moments include no music at all. The use of silence as Diana goes through Gabe’s few belongings and the sound of the pen scratching on Diana’s ECT consent form highlight these pivotal moments in a sea of sound.
Next to Normal is not a flashy sing-along, but rather the consequence of a system that treats the symptom, not the cause. This suburban tale explores the family problems parenting manuals won’t tell you about. Stop what you’re doing, grab some tissues and buy tickets before they sell out.
Next to Normal is running until 15 August at Sanctuary at Paradise in Augustines.
Buy tickets here.
Image by Andrew Perry, provided to The Student as press material.
