Next to Normal: An honest portrayal of mental illness

There may still be stigma attached to mental illness in real life, but in much popular fiction, film and theatre, it can be romanticized beyond all recognition.

Psychiatrists and psychologists are frequently caricatured as either sadists or snake-oil salesmen, while characters suffering from mental disorders or intellectual disabilities are depicted as not only special but almost extra-human. Think kindly Elwood P. Dowd with his invisible friend Harvey.

The chief triumph of Next to Normal – currently in Toronto on tour, presented by Dancap – is that its portrait of a suburban mother with mental illness avoids all the obvious temptations and traps. Diana is real and relatable, but her problems aren't watered down or amped up, and neither are her family members' complex cocktail of emotions – from love to denial to outright anger.

That Next to Normal manages this level of sophistication in the form of a rock musical is certainly enough to understand why composer Tom Kitt and writer Brian Yorkey earned the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for it – if only to make up for the one given to Harvey in 1945 (over The Glass Menagerie, no less). The downside to its avoidance of dramatic tropes, however, is that it ends up more observational than dramatic.

Diana, here played by Alice Ripley, reprising her Tony Award-winning performance, has been suffering from a frequently diagnosed, but never entirely pinned down mental illness for almost 18 years. Her husband Dan (Asa Somers) puts on a brave face, while secretly yearning for his escape to work every day. Their high-achieving daughter Natalie (Emma Hunton) is an accident waiting to happen; when Diana tries to go off her drugs, it proves too much for her and she decides to go on them.

Diana also – a spoiler is coming, though it spoils itself quite early on – hallucinates an imaginary companion like Elwood, though whether he is more friend or foe is ambiguous. Gabe, played by Curt Hansen as almost demonically perfect, is the son she lost when he was a baby but who has kept aging in her mind. She finds comfort in his company, but he also draws her deeper into delusions, dangerously so in his beautiful but chilling lullaby There's a World.

Next to Normal takes a while to warm up and show its layers, in part because the creators want to surprise the audience with this and other aspects of the situation. An early moment where Natalie, practising piano, sings in the second person can be alienating for audiences unburdened by American, middle-class problems: “You'll rock that recital and get into Yale, so you won't feel so sick and you won't look so pale.”

Elsewhere, Yorkey's lyrics can be quite evocative, and he has a knack for finding darker resonances in familiar words like “light.” But he also overindulges in cultural references. There are nods at both Rodgers and Hammerstein (“These are a few of my favourite pills”) and Roger Waters (“Wish I were here”), as well as awkwardly overt mentions of Sylvia Plath and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. “Didn't I see this movie with McMurphy and the nurse?” Diana sings. “That hospital was heavy but this cuckoo's nest is worse.” Perhaps, it would have been better to leave it to audiences to make the comparison.

Next to Normal's overall honesty is a tonic for its occasional irritations, however. The portrayal of pharmapsychology and even electroshock therapy – imperfect instruments, but all that we have – is nuanced; Canadian Jeremy Kushnier, last seen here in Toronto in Jersey Boys, is empathetic as a series of doctors Diana visits.

Director Michael Greif's production owes more than a little to that aforementioned Des McAnuff-directed megahit, despite the starkly different subject matter. Choreographer Sergio Trujillo is borrowed from Jersey Boys, as are elements of Mark Wendland's three-level, metal set with Roy Lichtenstein-inspired sliding panels. The set-up seems awfully over-the-top for what is ultimately, an intimate six-character musical, but, hey, that's Broadway.

As a Tony winner out on tour, Ripley is the draw. Her performance as Diana has an appealingly imbalanced quality, her mania manifesting itself particularly in her eyes. But she has an odd, distracting voice – with vowel sounds take you on a trip around the world without leaving your theatre seat. Here vocal idiosyncrasies are one thing, but her voice is also clearly tired. It was forced and often flat, not at all like how it sounds on the cast album.

In Toronto then, Hunton emerges as the real star. It's her story and relationship with boyfriend Henry (Preston Sadleir), which too obviously mirrors that of her parents, that really connects and hits home hard with the audience.

Next to Normal runs until July 30.

Next to Normal