Family copes with mental illness in Paramount’s ‘Next to Normal’

The Paramount Theatre’s second season of its innovative Bold Series kicks off with a Pulitzer-prize winning musical about a suburban family dealing with mental illness.

Winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, nominated for 11 Tony Awards and winner for Best Musical Score, “Next to Normal” is a courageous and timely story set to a contemporary rock music score, said director Jim Corti, Paramount Theatre’s artistic director.

Performances of “Next to Normal” are at 1:30 and 7 p.m. Wednesdays; 7 p.m. Thursdays; 8 p.m. Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; and 1 and 5:30 p.m. Sundays through Sept. 3. The play opened July 26.

“It’s incredibly difficult and this cast and design team and production team is doing a magnificent job,” he said. “It’s a very difficult show (but) we’ve got a beautiful handle on it.”

Corti saw “Next to Normal” on Broadway and fell in love with the play about a wife and mother from an upper-middle-class suburb suffering from ever-worsening bipolar disorder while her family copes.

“This family is professional. The father is an architect and the kids are planning to go to college. The daughter is planning to go to Yale. She’s a musician. She’s brilliant. But behind closed doors there’s this very dark secret of the trouble they’re in and how they’re dealing with it and how it affects each one of them personally,” he said.

“I don’t want to spoil it because there’s a huge plot device in it that’s very surprising. They deal with medication, they deal with doctors, psychopharmacologists and ECT — which is electroconvulsive therapy. It’s rare these days but is used as a last-ditch treatment for cases where they don’t know what else to do. She goes through that and it’s a whole musical number.”

The heady subject matter is a set to a bouncy pop-rock score, which he described as “stunningly beautiful” and “very intricate with tight harmonies.”

“It’s a really unique piece and I don’t think there’s anything quite like it. Having this family deal with mental illness and having it done to a score like this,” he said. “It reminds me of Sondheim in a way because the notes don’t go where you think they might. It’s been a real challenge for this cast to get it musically precise. It’s been a joy for me to watch them meet the challenge and succeed.”

The score works well because rock music is all about coming from a place of pain and angst and prevailing over it, he said.

“It’s surprising how it soothes this family that’s trying to find some normalcy in their lives,” he said. “There’s a whole theme of how dark it is emotionally and psychologically and how they find light. How the central character, Diana, realizes what it is she needs to do to take care of herself. It’s all about the patient discovering their own means of finding out how to get well.”

Mental illness is all too common and this musical gives the viewer an idea about living with it on a daily basis, he said.

“That’s what we’re here for, to serve the audience, to serve the community and show them the vast array of writing in theater and how different a lot of these plays are from the mainstream stuff you see,” he said. “I’m surprised at how many people know ‘Next to Normal.’

“It’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning play, it won a bunch of Tonys including Best Musical and it sold for a reason. It’s excellent and compassionate and very powerful theater. This is a story that really should be shared. It’s very moving and very emotional and I can’t help but think people are seeing their story or a loved ones’ story or someone they know in the story we’re telling. That’s the kind of thing that creates a classic.

“Even if you’ve never gone to the theater before, come and see this,” he said. “It will make you lean forward and see something that’s very disturbing and very funny.”

‘Next to Normal’

When: 1:30 and 7 p.m. Wednesdays; 7 p.m. Thursdays; 8 p.m. Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; and 1 and 5:30 p.m. Sundays through Sept. 3

Where: Copley Theatre, 8 E. Galena Blvd., Aurora

Tickets: $40-$55

Information: 630-896-6666; paramountaurora.com

Annie Alleman is a freelance reporter for the Beacon-News.