Next To Normal (2024 London production): Trailer, certificate and where to watch
Musical about a bipolar mother and her seemingly perfect family
Year: 2024
Watch now on National Theatre At Home
First performed on Broadway in 2009, Next To Normal is a musical that orbits around wife and mother Diana, an unreliable narrator with bipolar disorder whose view of reality isn't always to be taken at face value. We won't spoil how far that goes but that gap between image and reality is a theme for all of her family, who are introduced one after the other in the opening song, Perfect Loving Family. There's a bite to that song just as there's a bite to Next To Normal as a whole which, while it doesn't feel nearly as bold as it did on its debut, still packs a serious punch.
The London production stars Caissie Levy as Diana (a role for which she was Olivier-nominated), and the wider cast features Eleanor Worthington-Cox as her daughter Natalie, a stressed-out girl who doesn't know how to handle her mother and on whom so much of the tension of the story falls. Worthington-Cox has a real facility for such vulnerable characters on stage and may be a familiar face from TV, too (Hetty Feather, The Enfield Haunting, Britannia).
The music has a glossy, superficial American rock feel that can make you undervalue the lyrics (do listen closely, it's worth it), the use of the set is innovative and it's frequently darkly funny; but it's the unflinching way it tackles mental health and the emotional punch it delivers that stays with you. (130 minutes)
