Given that Next to Normal is about a woman with bipolar disorder, it is presumably intentional that the Donmar’s revival of this 2010 Pulitzer prize-winning musical feels, at times, somewhat overwhelming. The songs and emotions come at you in a barrage, their multiplicity of genres underlining the confused and sometimes heightened reality in which the protagonist lives.
The show begins with ebullience and panache as we watch a loving, modern family sharing jokes and neuroses. There is a Red Bull-chugging daughter, a perfectionist prepping for her piano recital, and a cheeky, slightly unreliable son; their father has no idea what his wife, Diana, is talking about half the time, while she – compellingly portrayed by Caissie Levy – appears to be holding their busy lives together on “a latte and a prayer”. But by the end of the opening number, she is behaving strangely; it is here that the truth of the situation begins to emerge.
