The Toronto Theatre Review: A raw and compassionate staging finds extraordinary power in intimacy.
By Ross
Few musicals affect me as immediately and completely as Next to Normal. The first notes alone are enough to trigger a rush of anticipation, not because they promise comfort, but because they promise something far more complicated and valuable: honesty. Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey’s Pulitzer Prize-winning musical has never been an easy night at the theatre. It asks audiences to confront grief, trauma, mental illness, addiction, and the complicated ways families learn to survive what should be impossible to survive. Yet for all its darkness, it remains one of the most profoundly moving musicals of the last two decades. When Bowtie Productions announced a new Toronto staging at Native Earth’s intimate Aki Studio, it immediately became one of the productions I most wanted to see this season. Under Anthony Goncharov’s assured direction, this production proves exactly why the show continues to resonate so deeply.
My connection to Next to Normal stretches back to Alice Ripley’s astonishing Tony Award-winning performance as Diana Goodman on Broadway. Like many, that production became inseparable from my understanding of the musical’s emotional power. Ripley’s work felt fearless, raw, and almost impossibly exposed. It set a standard that has lingered in my memory every time I return to this remarkable show. Walking into the Aki Studio, I carried some of that history with me, curious to discover what a new cast and creative team would uncover within material I know so well, and curious to see how it would affect me this time around.
Part of the brilliance of Next to Normal lies in the way Yorkey’s script gradually reveals its truths. Even for those familiar with the material, the writing retains its devastating impact. Understanding arrives carefully and deliberately, forcing audiences to continually reassess what they think they understand about the Goodman family and the reality they inhabit. Kitt’s rock-infused score works hand in hand with those revelations, generating a constant sense of momentum and emotional unease. The music rarely allows anyone, onstage or off, to settle comfortably. Instead, it pushes forward with urgency, carrying us deeper into a family struggling beneath the weight of loss, memory, and expectations they can no longer sustain.
Goncharov (Icarus’s Constellations) understands that the musical’s power does not come from spectacle but from emotional truth. Working within the intimacy of the Aki Studio, he creates a production that feels immediate and deeply personal. The audience is positioned close enough to witness every shift in expression and every fracture in the family’s carefully maintained façade. The staging wisely embraces the venue’s closeness and cleanness, allowing the emotional volatility of the material to land with remarkable force. The result is often uncomfortable, but it is precisely that discomfort that makes the production so compelling.
At the centre stands April Rebecca (Terminal’s The Last Five Years) as Diana Goodman, delivering a performance that anchors the entire evening. Diana is one of contemporary musical theatre’s most demanding roles, requiring a performer capable of navigating humour, tenderness, rage, confusion, vulnerability, and fierce determination, often within the span of a single song. Rebecca majestically rises to that challenge. Her Diana possesses an engaging warmth early on, particularly in her interactions with her family, but she also shows us the instability and exhaustion lurking just beneath the surface.
Vocally, Rebecca attacks the score fearlessly. Her voice carries both power and emotional specificity, enabling songs to feel like genuine expressions of thought rather than simply musical performances. More importantly, she never loses sight of Diana’s humanity. Even during the character’s most erratic or destructive moments, Rebecca ensures we understand the pain driving those actions. She captures both the seductive pull of mania and the crushing weight of depression, creating a portrait that feels complex, compassionate, and painfully real.
I would be lying if I said memories of Alice Ripley never crossed my mind while watching. They did. Few performances have ever left such a lasting imprint on my understanding of a musical. Yet Rebecca quickly earned the freedom to exist on her own terms. She does not chase Ripley’s shadow. Instead, she trusts Yorkey’s language, Kitt’s music, and her own instincts, discovering a Diana that feels entirely lived-in and emotionally honest.
Taylor Long (Horrorshow’s Cabaret) provides strong support as her husband, Dan Goodman, desperately trying to hold together a family that continually threatens to splinter apart. Long approaches the role with quiet restraint, allowing Dan’s devotion and desperation to emerge gradually. His strongest moments arrive when the character’s carefully maintained composure begins to crack, revealing the loneliness and heartbreak beneath his determination to keep moving forward. While some of the score’s more demanding vocal passages occasionally expose limitations, the emotional authenticity of the performance remains strong and determined.
The dynamic between Dan and Diana becomes one of the production’s most affecting elements. Their marriage exists in a constant state of negotiation between love, frustration, loyalty, and exhaustion. Goncharov wisely allows those tensions to breathe, giving both performers space to explore the complicated emotional terrain that defines their relationship.
As Natalie, Aveleigh Keller (StratFest’s Evita) delivers one of the evening’s standout performances. Natalie often functions as the overlooked member of the family, desperately seeking recognition while simultaneously trying to escape the chaos surrounding her. Keller captures that contradiction beautifully. Her Natalie projects defiance and intelligence, yet beneath the sarcasm, frustration, and crossed defiant arms lies a young woman carrying immense emotional burdens of her own and struggling hard against them. Keller’s vocal work is consistently impressive throughout the evening, but it is her emotional precision that leaves the strongest impression. She communicates Natalie’s longing for connection and validation with remarkable clarity, particularly in scenes involving her mother. The character’s pain often manifests as anger, and Keller navigates those transitions with confidence and nuance.
As the gentle, almost haunting presence to Gabe, Christopher Lyon (Shakespeare Co.’s Something Rotten!) leans into the character’s emotional pull on Diana, creating an ongoing sense of yearning that permeates the production. Lyon’s vocal performance helps establish Gabe as both comforting and unsettling, a figure who simultaneously offers solace and perpetuates suffering. His physicality with Rebecca’s Diana feels a bit too hands-on and insistent, introducing an unnecessary discomfort into a relationship already complicated enough by the material itself. Likewise, there are moments when Lyon’s stage movement seems to lag behind the production’s emotional momentum. While his vocal performance captures Gabe’s yearning, his physical presence occasionally feels disconnected from the urgency driving the rest of the piece. It tugs on our attention, distracting us with his sluggish energy that keeps us at arm’s length from his neediness.
Natalie’s relationship with the young fellow student, Henry, provides some tender moments amid the heavier material. Samuel Sunil (Charlottetown Fest’s Munschables) brings warmth and sincerity to the role, creating an immediately likable presence that we want to lean into. His chemistry with Keller feels completely natural and unforced, allowing their moments together to provide genuine emotional relief without ever undermining the seriousness of the surrounding narrative. Their musical moments together are particularly effective, revealing two young people trying to navigate uncertainty while searching for something stable to hold onto.
In the dual roles of Dr. Fine and Dr. Madden, Mich Anger handles their dual stance with confidence and charisma, finding clarity within each doctor portrayed. The production wisely embraces the humour embedded within these scenes, particularly as Diana’s treatment journey becomes increasingly complicated. Anger balances the larger theatrical moments with genuine compassion, ensuring that the Rock Star doctor remains recognizably human and caring, rather than becoming a simple symbol of the medical system. It’s a very balanced approach that registers solidly without judgement.
One of the production’s greatest strengths is its willingness to engage directly with the realities of mental illness without reducing its characters to diagnoses. The musical’s exploration of bipolar disorder extends beyond clinical terminology into questions of identity, memory, grief, and the exhausting societal pressure to appear functional when everything internally is falling apart. Goncharov keeps those themes at the forefront throughout the evening, trusting the material and performers to carry the emotional weight without unnecessary embellishment.
The design elements support that approach effectively, as Michael Ippolito‘s musical direction proves particularly important to the production’s success. Kitt’s score arrives with clarity, precision, and emotional force, enveloping the space while never overwhelming the performers. The music becomes an active presence throughout the evening, guiding us through the shifting emotional terrain with remarkable confidence. Goncharov’s scenic design establishes a functional playing space that allows scenes to flow smoothly while emphasizing the emotional isolation experienced by the characters. Emily Anne Corcoran‘s costumes feel grounded and appropriate to the world of the play, while Niall Durcan‘s lighting design often proves instrumental in guiding us through the shifting psychological landscape. It’s a simple approach to the musical, keeping it sparse and unadorned, but it adds to the rawness, keeping us focused on the engagement of those on stage, without giving us anything else to be distracted by.
The production’s few shortcomings stem largely from technical issues rather than artistic choices. Erik Richards (TIFT’s Company) and al starkey (Hart House’s The Grey) create a soundscape that supports the musical’s emotional volatility, allowing both the rock score and quieter moments of vulnerability to coexist effectively within the intimate venue. Unfortunately, sound levels do occasionally fluctuate unexpectedly, and there are moments when microphone inconsistencies make it more difficult to fully appreciate the score and lyrics. Given how much of Next to Normal depends on the audience’s ability to remain emotionally connected to every lyric and musical phrase, these interruptions become noticeable. Fortunately, the strength of the performances consistently overcomes those challenges.
What ultimately makes this production so successful is the emotional honesty at its core. The Goodman family’s struggles never feel abstract or distant. Every character is searching for connection, understanding, and some version of peace, even when they cannot agree on what that peace might look like. Bowtie Productions embraces the musical’s complexity rather than simplifying it, allowing joy, humour, love, anger, grief, and hope to coexist in the same space.
That emotional openness is what has always made Next to Normal such a remarkable piece of theatre, and it is what gives this production its power. Sitting in the intimacy of the Aki Studio, surrounded by a family trying to survive unimaginable pain while still reaching for one another, I found myself gripped by the same feeling that has drawn me back to this musical time and again. It asks difficult questions, offers few easy answers, and still finds room for compassion. Through a deeply committed cast and a fearless central performance from April Rebecca, this production embraces that truth wholeheartedly, leaving its audience shaken, moved, and grateful to have shared the journey.
