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'Next to Normal' musical about mental illness gets intimate staging at Theater Wit

Chicago Tribune - 8/28/2016

Aug. 28--On a clear day, you can see that loss is forever. So who wouldn't prefer some mental clouds to cover the painful truth?

Denial-as-survival is one of the frayed threads tying together the falling-apart Goodman family in "Next to Normal." This Tony- and Pulitzer-winning rock musical by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey sets the characters in an emotional minefield, where pharmaceuticals and frenzied coping mechanisms provide little in the way of psychological protective gear. Now in a stark but resonant staging with BoHo Theatre under Linda Fortunato's direction, the production makes a good case that the show -- last presented locally at Drury Lane in Oakbrook Terrace three years ago -- deserves the kind of up-close look that the more-intimate environs of Theater Wit can offer.

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I'll leave it to the experts to evaluate how accurately the condition of Diana (Colette Todd), the fragile-but-fierce mother at the heart of the story, reflects the actual state of someone with bipolar disorder. This is a musical, after all, not a case study. But as a portrait of what it's like to understand mental illness as a chronic condition (whether as a patient or a patient bystander), rather than a temporary detour on the road of life, "Next to Normal" hits the target with empathy and surprising wit.

Diana's struggle to come to terms with what has happened in her family -- which includes husband Dan (Donterrio Johnson), overachieving teen daughter Natalie (Ciera Dawn), and winsome-but-troublemaking teen son Gabe (Gilbert Domally) -- takes her through a manual's worth of mood-altering pills with one doctor, the "talking cure" with another and eventually electroconvulsive therapy. Peter Robel plays both physicians -- just one of the thematic diptychs written into a show that, like Diana, runs from light to dark with quicksilver speed.

Meantime, the toll of raising herself in the shadow of an emotionally absent mother drives Natalie into the arms of Henry (Bradley Atkinson), a good-natured pot-smoking high school classmate who doesn't fully understand why Natalie pushes him away when she seems to need him most. Here "Next to Normal" seems to (happily) channel the John Cusack film "Say Anything," which also features a brainy girl with trouble at home falling for an amiable slacker.

Todd brings a ruminative and wry undertone to Diana that girds even the most histrionic numbers in a score that never fears to push past the top from time to time. In a song like "Didn't I See This Movie?" where Diana runs through a mini-laundry list of cultural references to mental illness (including the strained line "I'm no sociopath, I'm no Sylvia Plath"), that's needed for ballast.

"Wish I Were Here," where hospitalized Diana and acting-out-with-drugs-and-clubbing Natalie mirror each other's clouded states, suggests that maybe Natalie's sardonic defense mechanisms are something she picked up from her mother -- and that she needs because of her mother. The relationship between Dawn's tightly wound Natalie and Atkinson's Henry also suggests some of the same dynamics that led steadfast Dan to choose -- and then stand by -- Diana for so many years. "What doctors call dysfunction, we tried to call romance," Diana ruefully recalls in "So Anyway."

Johnson's Dan overplays the stoic card a bit, particularly in the first act, but we see him starting to crack apart under the strain of keeping it all together in his duet with Todd, "How Could I Ever Forget?" As the odd-boy-out in the family, Domally's Gabe demands to be heard and seen in "I'm Alive."

Sarah Ross' deliberately minimalist set features cut-out windows that look out on nothing and walls covered in monochromatic gray. It's a subtle but eminently suitable metaphor for what it feels like to deal with debilitating mental illness. The ensemble works with the unseen band (led by Ellen K. Morris) to keep the more operatic aspects of this rock opera from overpowering the space. Judging by the sniffling around me on opening night, "Next to Normal" doesn't need a lot of sonic bells and whistles to hit the heart.

Perhaps the greatest triumph offered by both this warm and wise production in particular and the show in general is how it pushes back on the idea of "closure" as the goal of life. "You don't have to be happy at all to be happy you're alive," sings Todd's Diana with hard-earned conviction by the end of the show. It's not exactly a soaring affirmation -- but it's a truthful one. And once denial falls apart, the truth may set us free.

Kerry Reid is a freelance critic.

ctc-arts@chicagotribune.com

When: Through Oct. 9

Where: Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont Ave.

Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes

Tickets: $27-$30 at 773-975-8150 or bohotheatre.com

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