Mental illness tears at the core of one family in blistering ‘Next to Normal’

It’s been roughly nine years since Skokie native David Cromer directed a story of mental illness at Writers. With “Next to Normal,” the Tony Award-winning director shows his gift for anguish hasn’t diminished since 2010’s memorably torrid “A Streetcar Named Desire.” When Cromer depicts damage within his characters on stage, he makes the audience see the most vulnerable, darkest parts of themselves.

“Next to Normal” is often summarized as one woman’s harrowing journey through bi-polar disorder and delusions. But composer Tom Kitt and lyricist/librettist Brian Yorkey’s Pulitzer Prize-winning musical is far more ambitious than that. They’ve written a devastating portrayal of a family under siege. As Diana Goodman (Keely Vasquez) undergoes a litany of treatments, the aftershocks reverberating through her loved ones are almost as destructive as the disease itself.

If you saw “Next to Normal” in the greater Chicago-area before, it was from a distance, at a much larger venue. Writers’ Nichols Theatre has 250 seats. Intimacy is a powerful weapon in Cromer’s arsenal, especially when emotions are running high.

They run high throughout “Next to Normal.” One of many things Kitt and Yorkey get right about mood disorders is the potentially crushing trial-by-error nature of antidepressants and other pharmacological treatments. When medication fails and Dr. Madden (Gabriel Ruiz) recommends Diana undergo electro-convulsive therapy (aka “shock” therapy), both her daughter Natalie (Kyrie Courter) and her husband Dan (David Schlumpf ) are alarmed and repulsed by the idea of a treatment that sends voltage directly into the brain and usually results in memory loss. Their worries are not misplaced.

That’s as much of this plot as can be revealed without revealing the massive twist Kitt and Yorkey throw at you during a birthday party for Diana and Dan’s son, Gabe (Liam Oh). Gabe’s hard-rocking “I’m Alive” starts out as a celebration of vitality. It ends as a predatory threat. Oh fills the number with white-hot charisma and chilling malevolence.

Oh’s larger-than-life presence works beautifully opposite Vasquez’s Diana. When her powerful alto sends “I Miss the Mountains” coursing through theater, the sound is raw and ethereal. Diana’s meds have cured the mood swings and hallucinations but they have also erased her personality. When she flushes her pills in the song’s final moments, you understand why, even as you want to scream that this is a very bad idea.

“Next to Normal” gives everyone in the small cast a chance to dig deep. As Dan, Schlumpf captures the stalwart, unsung heroism of an average guy who remains passionately devoted to his wife, for better or for far, far worse. As Natalie, Courter is caught in the cross-fire of mental illness, genetics and her parents increasingly rocky marriage. In the plaintive “Everything Else,” Courter makes crystalline clear the power of a perfectly composed Mozart sonata to serve as a life ring in a sea of relentless insanity. Natalie’s persistent boyfriend Henry (Alex Levy, painfully relatable as an adolescent in love) is almost a younger version of Dan: Dogged in his persistence, and unwilling walk away even when forcibly pushed.

Finally there’s Ruiz, rocking a lab coat with all the compassion and authority one wants from a doctor. Through Dr. Madden’s caring, measured ministrations, we see that psychiatry is a painfully inexact science capable of engendering equal parts hope and despair.

Set designer Regina Garcia creates a puzzle-box of interlocking rooms to depict the Goodman’s fractured household, a steep staircase dominating the space as a visual reminder of the extreme ups and downs of Diana’s illness. The production is backed by music director/keyboardist Andra Velis Simon’s eight-piece pocket orchestra, sequestered behind the set and fueling the action with Kitt’s guitar-heavy, rock-infused score.

Cromer (who won a 2018 Tony for his direction of Broadway’s “The Band’s Visit”) slips up only in the lighting design (by Keith Parham), which puts the entire stage in deep shadow during several crucial scenes. (Blinking a flashlight is not an effective way to depict ECT on stage. But that’s a relatively small misstep.)

“Next to Normal” retains its brilliance and its universality. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, about one in 10 people in the U.S. lives with a mood disorder. “Next to Normal” beautifully depicts the humanity within the pathology.

Catey Sullivan is a local freelance writer.