The Next to Normal audience is exposed to waves of raw emotions drowning your soul and dampening your eyes. You may wish you had premedicated with any of the behavioral health medications lacing the lyrics.
The rock musical, now performing at Trinity Repertory, is one prolonged gut punch stretching two and a half hours as a family’s life unravels due to mom Diana’s bipolar disorder and delusions. As odd as it sounds, it is also a cathartic, affirming and even hopeful experience that lingers long after the aptly titled finale “Let There Be Light.”
After the play’s Tony Award-winning 2009 Broadway debut, the Trinity production provides a more intimate approach to Diana’s character. The company’s unique depiction of her struggle to return to the woman she once was before tragedy triggered the disease underlines her family’s battle with emotions as well as her own.
In the hands of director Amanda Dehnert, who recruits a solid cast capable of flawless vocals, “Next to Normal” is a deeply moving dissection of a mind plagued by mental illness and the disease’s ripples through a marriage, a child’s development and beyond.
It’s ugly at times, with a suicide attempt and a shocking look at electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) treatment. It’s heart-breaking most of the time. Diana likens her struggle to dying alive while her husband Dan later sings, “Who’s crazy – the one who’s half gone or the one who holds on?”
Diana struggles with delusions her therapist says leave her unable to move past her grief around the loss of her son, and the audience lives those scenes with her, often unable to determine what is real and not. Brian Yorkey’s exquisite lyrics guide the journey, with lighter moments such as a chorus of pharmaceutical names buoying viewers through the darkness.
There is not a moment of “Next to Normal” that isn’t captivating, and the cast has much to do with that success. Led by Rachael Warren as Diana, they embody the family’s pain as their own, voices vibrating alternately with sorrow and hope. The cast, guided by Dehnert, take a tragic story and deliver it in a way that is embraced, mourned and then released expectantly.
Warren is simply brilliant. She manages to slip from hypomania to the inertia of depression seamlessly, body language and intonation perfect. Her rendition of “I Miss the Mountains,” as a post-ECT Diana muses about her neutralized emotions, provides some of the theatre’s most charged moments.
She is not the only talent in this stacked cast, however. Making memorable Trinity debuts are: Ariel Neydavoud, Diana’s doctor transformed by her delusions into a heavy metal rockstar, is a show highlight; and Nathaniel Stampley imbues Dan with a powerful and endearing blend of empathy and frustration.
Natalie, Diana and Dan’s daughter, proves an outstanding close to Erin Saidan Lockett’s MFA studies at Trinity and Brown University. Her vocals – notably “Superboy and the Invisible Girl” — are electric as she rebels against her perfect child role and struggles in a largely motherless home. Nigel Richards as the couple’s first child brings pesky sibling energy as he stakes an emotional claim on his mother. His version of “I’m Alive” is buoyant and light.
“Next to Normal” is one of those imperative shows with a message about turning pain into hope and contentment. “Pain is the price we pay to feel,” one actor offers to summarize the impetus for moving through struggles. The show is on stage at Trinity through June 28. For tickets, go to trinityrep.com.