Next to Normal

Playwright Brian Yorkey and composer Tom Kitt won a Pulitzer Prize for drama for this 2010 musical, which takes mental illness out of its usual scary, sensationalist theatrical realm and places it where it had never been before: in the spotless kitchen of a middle-class suburban home on a sunny spring morning, where workaholic mom and housewife Diana’s optimism gradually veers into the manic side of her bipolar disorder. Though this smart, warm central character is not depicted as a victim, we witness her and her family’s struggles to maintain dignity and balance in the face of treacherous hallucinations and fluctuations in her brain chemistry. The odyssey of treatments and modalities Diana endures in the search for normalcy puts everyone around her through changes as well, including her loving but bewildered husband, Dan, and her overachieving, worried daughter, Natalie. Aubrey Comperatore plays Diana; NRACT artistic director Timothy Locklear directs. —Byron Woods