Next to Normal

The critically acclaimed, sold-out Donmar Warehouse production of ‘Next to Normal’ came to London’s West End for a strictly limited season at Wyndham’s Theatre from 18th June 2024.

‘Next to Normal’ is an intimate exploration of family, loss and grief. At its core is Diana Goodman, a mother living with bipolar, haunted by her past. The production’s portrayal of bipolar and its impact on a family is profound and deeply moving.

We spoke with the director of the play, Michael Longhurst, and Associate Director, Alessandra Davison, about their approach in bringing the revival to life.

Q. So, I just wanted to kick off by asking about the revival of the show. I know it was on first at the Donmar. What inspired that initial revival of the play at the Donmar?

MICHAEL: It's one of the titles I was most asked, begged, hounded to programme at the Donmar. I was aware of the title but didn't know it very well. A couple of mega fans in my programming team hounded me just before lockdown to have a proper listen, so I spent a chunk of my government sanctioned daily runs during lockdown listening to the soundtrack. It immediately grabbed you and I was excited about the story of it.

I think our consciousness in the UK about mental illness, possibly because people were thinking about their mental health more, has dramatically risen since the pandemic. I noticed it in conversations. That felt a really exciting jump-off base.

Q. How did you try to address the specificities of what it's like to live with a mental illness?

MICHAEL: I think one of the privileges and responsibilities of being a director is that you have to try and become as much of a mini expert as you can in the period of time you have before you to make the play work. You have a responsibility to represent the subject matter as responsibly as you can. I think especially in a subject where there is stigma, you've really got to try and take care of that.

ALE: Yeah, we worked with a lot of different experts. It helped having lots of different people in the cast and the creative team with various proximities to bipolar and mental health issues. What came out really strongly is that no one has the same exact experience of bipolar as a condition.

There are so many people that have very different experiences of it: different treatments, different paths to diagnosis. So, it wasn't one person with expertise providing what they thought bipolar was, it was many which I think was really important.

Looking after the cast was important too – we had a wellbeing practitioner who was around frequently and is still available for the cast to talk to throughout the run.

Q. I'd be really intrigued to know more about your research processes and if this piece required you to alter your usual research process.

MICHAEL: I think the text is your manual. Lots of documentaries, reading lists. Ale shared loads of brilliant books which were really helpful in terms of reading people’s case studies. I’d seen the Stephen Fry documentary before I came to this piece but that was probably about it in terms of my total experience of bipolar.

I love getting an expert in to come and engage with the cast, whether the subject is mental illness or climate change, so they can provide amazing expertise. We found a series of psychiatrists and doctors who have administered ECT who created these different perspectives. We do a Q&A with the cast or sometimes they do a presentation to the cast.

That’s amazing because what you want to do is put actors on stage who feel that they are representing authentically. That feels more important than ever at this time.

ALE: People want to talk about it. People weren’t asked about it before. I think that, especially in this rehearsal room, it was an opportunity for people to share.

There was a lot of generosity from everyone in the room to the sensitivity of it. It was a nice discovery that we have moved to a place where we can talk about it and be more open than we used to be.

Q. How did you approach the topic of grief and trauma when it came to directing the piece?

ALE: I think we wanted to show that just because someone has bipolar, it doesn't make them immune to other things - you can still be neurodiverse or you can still have grief in your life. It's about the fact that every human is also living with 100 other things at the same time, and they might intersect with bipolar in that person. There's always other stuff going on, too.

MICHAEL: I think that's why the cast enjoy playing it so much as well. They are playing fully rounded characters in a complicated situation. What they're not playing is a single theme or a single issue.

Q. Do you think that audiences will respond differently to the play now than they might have done when it was first staged in 2008 because of the shift in conversation around mental illness and mental health more generally?

ALE: If you've got a different room with a different cast that interpret those characters in a different way and embody them in a different way, you're going to get two productions, no matter if it’s at the same time or a decade later.

But I think something interesting is that we did speak a lot about how treatment has evolved, how things have moved forward but also that things maybe have not changed as much as people would think that they have.

We just have a different understanding. The condition itself hasn't changed. People have been dealing with bipolar and mood disorders since the beginning of time. People are still dealing with it in the same way.

So much of the play is about the character and her family and their life, so there will be parallels to any household, at any different time.

Q. It’s really important for us as a charity to support the loved ones of those with bipolar. How important was it for you to make sure that the family element was at the forefront of the piece?

MICHAEL: I think we are blessed with such an amazing cast that everyone brings such incredible specificity, empathy and sensitivity to the characters they're playing that that you really get that portrait of a full family.

So many people have told us that they're either a Diana or that they have a Diana in their life. I think, by the numbers, more people are the supporter than the Diana.

So, actually, lots of people coming into this show are seeing their experience on stage of what it's like to live alongside someone with bipolar and the challenges that come from it.

ALE: There is a nation of people that are both living with and supporting others that have bipolar. The younger character can both be supporting their mother, for example, and also be dealing with the scary concept that they might also develop similar symptoms. Seeing that in the production captures something really interesting.

Q. What role does it feel the Wyndham’s has taken in the revival?

MICHAEL: There is something kind of extraordinary about being in a room of 700 people as opposed to 250 at the Donmar. It feels we are bearing witness to this together.

We can feel that we're doing that as a group of people, so laughs are magnified and I think tears are magnified in the slightly bigger space. All of that adds to the hopefully very special experience audiences have coming to see it.

Image: Eleanor Worthington-Cox, Jamie Parker, Trevor Dion Nicholas, Caissie Levy, Jack Wolfe, Jack Ofrecio in NEXT TO NORMAL - Donmar Warehouse

Photo credit: Marc Brenner