Next to Normal

By Claire Gallagher

Next to Normal is an American rock opera with book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey and

music by Tom Kitt. It tells the story of a suburban mother struggling day to day with bipolar

disorder, and the many effects it has on her family and those surrounding her. It also contains

themes of grief, suicide, drugs, and psychiatry. It’s successful because of its level of emotion. It

was only the second rock musical to ever win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, behind Rent.

The story follows the character of Diana, the mother. She has hallucinations of her

deceased son Gabe, which makes her living daughter Natalie feel secondary. We also see her

husband Dan, Natalie’s boyfriend Henry, and Dr. Madden (who we sometimes see as Dr. Fine in

Diana’s delusions.) Diana’s arc follows a classic hero myth structure. (Miller) A hero myth

structure means she’s the hero of a character who adventures, is faced with a crisis, and comes

out changed or transformed. In this case, she literally journeys into her own unconscious. Natalie

also follows a hero myth of her own, very similar to her mother’s. Natalie’s awareness of it

creates a fear in her that she’ll follow her mother’s path, and that her relationship with Henry will

be as unsteady and face as many hardships as her parents’. Even Diana is aware of the parallels

she and her daughter are facing. She sings, at the beginning of “I Miss the Mountains”:

“There was a time when I flew higher.

Was a time the wild girl running free would be me.
Now I see her feel the fire.
Now I know she needs me there, to share.
I’m nowhere.
All these blank and tranquil years
seems they’ve dried up all my tears.
And while she runs free and fast
seems my wild days are past.”

These lyrics signify her manic past, along with worrying that Natalie will suffer the same way

she has, but also shows the slight jealousy she feels for Natalie’s youth and freedom. A major

difference in Diana and Natalie’s hero myths is their relationships with their partners. Dan didn’t

fully know the seriousness of Diana’s illness until later in their marriage, and felt forced to enter

the marriage to begin with. Henry, on the other hand, knows all of Natalie’s damage and still

chooses to be with her. This means, hopefully, they will have a healthier relationship than Diana

and Dan.

Next to Normal had a long, rocky journey to Broadway. With the battle of skyrocketing

ticket prices and a surge of non-English speaking tourists, producers weren’t interested in taking

on new shows, especially ones with material as dark as this one. (Miller) In 1998, Kitt and

Yorkey created a 10 minute sketch called Feeling Electric. They both kept moving on to other

shows and other projects, but would always find themselves returning to this idea. Eventually,

they expanded it into a full length musical. In 2005, an abbreviated version was performed at the

New York Musical Theatre Festival with stars such as Annaleigh Ashford and Anthony Rapp.

From there, producers took it to The Second Stage Theatre and workshopped it from 2006 to

2007. This is where Alice Ripley first joined as Diana, along with director Michael Greif. It

began playing Off Broadway in 2008, but barely ran a month. It received a mixed bag of

reviews, mainly negative, about finding a proper balance between the pathos and comedy of it.

They reworked the entire show, and opened it at Arena Stage in Washington, DC with a new
focus on emotions and the characters individual paths. After a run in DC from November 2008 to

January 2009, it began Broadway previews at the Booth Theatre in March 2009. It received rave

reviews for its rewrites. It has now been performed all over the world, including Scandinavia,

Australia, South America, and Europe.

Kitt and Yorkey’s collaboration on the music created a true rock opera. Although it

contains pop anthems, guitar rock, and power ballads, it’s structurally an opera score containing

arias, duets, quarters, sextets, and recitative. They followed the “Sondheim rule”- content

dictates form. Diana’s bipolar mood swings are depicted in the music. Dan’s music is erratic,

too. “It’s Gonna Be Good” is manic while his solo in “I’ve Been” is emotional and raw. As the

show gets darker, the music becomes more rock and roll. The lyrics are filled with rhyme,

alliteration, and textual themes. They’re all little things that the audience isn’t necessarily

supposed to catch on to, but it creates an energy and momentum that the audience can definitely

sense. Kitt and Yorkey tried to write the show in a means of storytelling that mirrors Diana’s

world. They often times write in 7/8 time signature, meaning you’re always expecting to hear

one more beat. They sometimes use two signatures at once played against each other, creating a

very intense and dissonant sound. They rarely put buttons at the end of songs, which means there

often isn’t applause at the end of the songs during performances because nothing ever feels

finished. There’s a quick turnover time between scenes, making it feel cinematic. All of the

music, and really just the show in general, is written to keep audiences off-kilter and disoriented

to show how mental illness affects people’s surroundings, in Diana’s case, even the audience.
We’re always in her orbit—when Dr. Madden becomes a rockstar in her mind, we see him as Dr.

Fine. When she’s in her delusions, we experience it.

Tom Kitt began his career on Broadway in 2002, music directing and conducting Debbie

Does Dallas. In 2006, he composed High Fidelity which quickly flopped. He was the music

supervisor, orchestrator, and music arranger for American Idiot, which makes sense with its

similarities to Next to Normal. He later worked with Lin-Manual Miranda on the Bring It On

musical. Miranda called him “one of the best melodists of our generation.” He joined up again

with Yorkey to work on If/Then and also Freaky Friday. They are both currently working on the

new Magic Mike musical. As for Brian Yorkey, he collaborated with Sting on the musical The

Last Ship, and cowrote the book and lyrics to Jesus in my Bedroom, a flop new musical. He most

recently adapted the novel 13 Reasons Why into the popular Netflix series it is today.

The Booth Theatre, where Next to Normal made its Broadway debut, was designed by

Henry B. Herts and named for actor Edwin Booth, brother of the infamous John Wilkes Booth. It

only has 783 seats, which is small for a Broadway house, but was purposefully created this way

because it was intended for intimate dramatic plays. It opened in 1913 with Arnold Bennett’s

The Great Adventure. At the time of its run, Next to Normal was the top-selling Box Office show

for the Booth, bringing in $552,563 over eight performances. The current top-sold show at the

Booth is The Elephant Man starring Bradley Cooper, which earned $1,058,547 over eight

performances in December 2014. Its runner up is I’ll Eat You Last: A Chat with Sue Mengers

starring Bette Midler. It earned $865,144 over eight performances in 2013. In its early years, the
theatre held a lot of musicals. As of recently, it has been showing mainly straight plays. Next to

Normal was the last musical in the theatre, and it closed in 2011.

The original idea for the show came from a news special about electroconvulsive therapy

that aired back in 2000. This is where they came up with the original title, Feeling Electric. The

current name, Next to Normal, was chosen because instead of taking Diana on a journey from

misfit to normal, writers gave her a more honest goal of finding a place next to normal. It’s also a

slight pun on the fact that the show is new and unique, and not conventionally normal. (Miller)

The show received mixed reviews about its portrayal of bipolar disorder. Some said it

further stigmatized the disorder, while others said it was comforting and relatable. The show was

created between 2002 and 2008, so there have been many advancements in the field since. In the

show, Diana is diagnosed with bipolar depressive with delusional episodes. At the time the show

was being written, this was accurate. Today, with the current standards, she would be diagnosed

with bipolar 1 with psychotic features i.e. hallucinations. (Cohen) Kitt and Yorkey wanted to do

right by mental illness, and not make it stereotypical. They noticed that mentally ill people were

often portrayed as a creative, like a painter. But they went against the norm, and decided the

character needed to be relatable. They made her a suburban housewife. Diana’s manic side is

shown in “Just Another Day” when she’s up all night making hundreds of sandwiches—pieces of

white bread covering the floor, and also in “It’s Going to be Good” when she’s off her

medications. There are a few main treatment options for someone with bipolar disorder. All are

tried for Diana. She’s given a plethora of drugs, which is not recommended in real life. “My

Psychopharmacologist and I” shows Diana walking through her medications with the doctor. She
lists all her side effects, such as nausea, drowsiness, sexual dysfunction, headaches and seizures,

to which the doctor replies “Patient stable.” Electroconvulsive therapy is also a treatment option,

tough typically a last resort. It was only ever offered to Diana after a suicide attempt prompted

by a hallucination of her son, Gabe. It induces seizures by sending electric currents to the brain.

This treatment is central to Next to Normal because it makes Diana lose her memory. During the

process of rewriting the show, they cut the title song “Feeling Electric” which was about

electroconvulsive therapy, and also cut some more stigmatizing and stereotypical moments, like

Diana having a breakdown in a Costco. Cutting moments like these allowed the audience to see a

more subtle and complex view of psychotherapy. (Cohen) People thought Kitt and Yorkey were

opposed to psychotropic drugs and psychologists, which is far from the truth. They actually

consulted many professionals while creating the show. One doctor, psychiatrist Anthony

Pietropinto, was lucky enough to have his exact words from an interview included as a lyric in

the show. “Is medicine magic? You know that it’s not. ..But it’s all that we’ve got.”

Although Next to Normal is important for portraying mental illness in a musical, it isn’t

the first to do so. Many popular and well known plays, such as Proof and Equus, deal with

mental illness as well. Proof tells the story of a troubled math prodigy who fears she’ll fall apart

like her father, while Equus tells the story of a psychiatrist who envies his young patients.

There’s also the popular One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, where mental illness is portrayed as

the only release of social misfit. (Justin V) There are also plays like Long Day’s Journey into

Night and Water by the Spoonful which deal with addiction and PTSD—also mental illnesses,

but of a different sort. Then there’s Grey Gardens, also directed by Michael Greif, which deals
with hoarding, OCD, and dementia. Grey Gardens is the only other well known musical that

centers around mental illness, alongside Next to Normal, while there’s a long list of straight plays

dealing with the subject. Other Desert Cities, Reckless, The Singing Forest, and 4.48 Psychosis

are some examples, just to name a few.

As stated earlier, Next to Normal was so successful because of its raw emotion, which is

what people want to see. No matter how the saying goes, audiences go to the theatre for

connection, not an escape. (Miller) They want to make sense of the world, and be reminded that

everyone goes through trials and tribulations. The show is simply connectable. Each character

must follow their own path and find their own sense of “real.” Everyone tries to tell Diana what

her path is supposed to be. When she finally takes control of her own life at the end of the show,

we start to think she may find her own “real.” Until then, we don’t feel that because others are in

control of her path. The ending is ambiguous. She’s taking action but that doesn’t mean the

results will be positive. We don’t know what the results will be, but the main point is she finds

her path for herself.

The show has won many awards for all of its productions, from Off-Broadway to Arena

Stage to Broadway. For its Arena Stage production, it was nominated for five Helen Hayes

Awards and won three. At the Tony’s, for its Broadway debut, it received 11 nominations and

three wins for best original score, best lead actress in a musical to Alice Ripley, and best

orchestrations. It also won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2010, which ultimately created a lot of

controversy. It wasn’t on the shortlist of three candidates that were submitted to the board by the

jury for judging and review, which were The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity by Kristoffer
Diaz; Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo by Rajiv Joseph; and In the Next Room, or the vibrator

play by Sarah Ruhl. But the board still chose it to win. The Jury Chairman openly criticized the

board for overlooking the three plays that were submitted. He believed they weren’t chosen

because they weren’t running on Broadway, and that the board wasn’t open to new playwriting.

(Brantley)

Next to Normal has been called, and in my opinion is, one of the best musicals of

the 21st century. It’s fresh, new, real, and game-changing. It handles dark and honest material,

and really explores something that thousands of people battle every day. It’s emotional and

connectable, and as I said before—people go to the theatre to connect, not escape.