About the work
Next to Normal is a rock musical by Tom Kitt (music) and Brian Yorkey (lyrics and book), premiered on Broadway in 2009. The work won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama—a rare honour for a musical—as well as three Tony Awards, including Best Score.
Plot
The apparently normal suburban Goodman family wrestles with the bipolar illness and delusions of the mother, Diana. For years she has grieved the early death of her son, whose apparition continues to haunt her. While her husband Dan desperately maintains the facade and their daughter Natalie feels neglected, Diana undergoes therapy, medication, and finally electroconvulsive treatment. The work refuses easy solutions and shows a family learning to live with pain rather than against it.
Cultural significance
Next to Normal was one of the first musicals to bring mental illness, grief, and the limits of psychiatry to the stage unflinchingly and seriously. Its Pulitzer Prize honoured the courage to address such a subject in rock-musical form. Songs such as I Miss the Mountains and Light were praised for their emotional honesty. The work is regarded as a milestone of the contemporary, thematically ambitious musical.