Review: Next to Normal

Pills and feeling bad

In the musical Next to Normal, the whole family feels bad.

Pills, blaring music, feeling bad and striving for normality. That’s the bold Next to Normal musical, the subject of which is quite tough even on today’s scale. The more than two-hour masterpiece of a band of six actors and six musicians demands a lot from its creators, but the work is completed safely without any failures. Jonna Järnefelt plays Diana, a diagnosed mother who has lost her mental health and cannot let go of the memory of her dead son. The efficiently adaptable Vuokko Hovatta manages to look and seem amazingly young in her role as the invisible teenager Natalie. It will be interesting to see whether the unwell family manages to grow together as a unit, or whether it turns out to be too tough a struggle to be taken care of by a mother who frantically makes sandwiches for her family. In any case, the family’s life in a rock musical is nowhere near normal.