Bwog attended the Columbia Musical Theater Society’s production of Next To Normal in the Glicker-Milstein Theatre on November 17-20.

Content Warning: mentions and depictions of death, suicide, bipolar depression, other mental illnesses, addiction, drug/alcohol use/abuse, staged intimacy, and foul language. 

This weekend saw five performances of the Columbia Musical Theater Society’s fall production of Next To Normal, the 2008 rock musical written by Brian Yorkey, with music by Tom Kitt. This production was directed by Miranda Paiz (BC ‘25) and starred Cameron Herring (BC ‘25) and Skylar Hudson (CC ‘25) as Diana and Dan, a married couple grappling with grief and mental illness. Mykhel Duckett (BC ‘27) played Natalie, the perfect daughter who can’t capture her parents’ attention amid the swirl of their troubles, and Kieran Lomboy (CC ‘26) played Gabe, their son.

The mother and daughter team, Herring and Duckett, paralleled each other in truly gut-wrenching ways. Hudson and Lomboy were perfect complements to the mother and sister pair, balancing out their frenetic energy (or perhaps being the cause of it). Herring played the role of a spiraling mother with gravity and seriousness, usually wearing an expression of deep pain that contrasted with her husband’s forced smile. Hudson as Dan displayed some magnificent acting; those sitting close to the stage watched as tears rolled off her face during especially poignant moments.

The opening of the show sees the whole family—mother, father, daughter, son—getting ready for “Just Another Day” of school, work, and life, singing their hearts out but demonstrating an anxiety that belied the seemingly normal quality of their lives. At school, Natalie meets Henry (Sage Friedman, BC ‘26), a boy who’s sat behind her in class for years but only now makes his existence known. He woos her, and though she terms him a “classic pretentious stoner type,” he actually turns out to be quite sweet. As they date, Henry wants to visit Natalie’s house, but she wishes to hide her family dysfunction from him. He eventually comes over for dinner during the musical number “It’s Gonna Be Good,” which sees the whole family gritting their teeth and preparing for normalcy. Yet the dinner quickly becomes painful when Diana brings out a birthday cake, saying it’s Natalie’s brother’s birthday. “I didn’t know you had a brother,” says Henry. “I don’t,” Natalie reveals, “He died before I was born.”

The revelation that Gabe is actually a figment of Diana’s grieving delusions kicks off the darker portion of the show, as both Gabe and Dan plead with Diana to essentially choose one or the other. For Diana, to live in the present with her husband and daughter means to forsake the son that only she remembers clearly; to hold onto her son means to continue hurting her family. 

Natalie’s ballad, “Superboy and the Invisible Girl,” was one of the most arresting moments in the show, revealing Natalie’s pain at being slighted by her mother for another child who never got to grow up; “He’s immortal, forever alive; then there’s me.” Gabe joins her on stage to make it a duet, pleading his case to the audience as well. Duckett’s voice was astonishingly clear, crystallizing her plea for attention even as Gabe emerged to symbolically distract the audience.

As part of her continuous efforts to hold her life together, Diana begins seeing a new therapist, Dr. Madden (Arya Balian, CC ‘26), who tries a variety of new treatments. Nevertheless, when tasked to finally clean out her son’s room, Diana can’t stop herself from being drawn in again by the seduction of the idea of joining her son. Gabe appears in a blue suit and the two waltz as he sings “There’s A World,” promising her a better place where the two can be together. In the next scene, we learn that Diana has attempted to end her life. 

Dr. Madden recommends electroshock therapy, which succeeds in making Diana feel more balanced, but erases parts of her memory—she initially can’t remember her own daughter and husband and doesn’t recall Gabe. Yet her memories start to return, and she is again forced to choose between the two halves of her family. Meanwhile, Natalie has developed a pill addiction and has grown away from Henry, who continues to plead with her to let him be a part of her life. 

Throughout this emotionally harrowing plot, the actors anchored their performances with sincerity and genuine grief as the musical numbers carried the plot forward. “I’m Alive” was a standout number, as Lomboy’s passion turned from tender to sinister as he forced his continued existence on his mother’s horrified consciousness. “I’m alive, I’m alive, I am so alive,” he sings, challenging our notions of what it means to live or to live on. He takes the form of whatever his mother needs him to be, creating a complex character that represents both emotional support and haunting grief. In the first act, Gabe and Dan sing “I Am The One” to Diana, each making his case for his hold on her. Yet the show’s penultimate number is a reprise of this, with Dan and Gabe singing to each other as Dan finally acknowledges that he hasn’t forgotten Gabe’s existence. The two hug, and Dan speaks his name for the first time in the show in a truly devastating sequence. “Gabriel.” As we heard the name, we felt the strength of memory and acceptance.

Balian and Friedman gave strong supporting performances, displaying a respective fierceness and tenderness that provided a foil to the family’s chaos. The parallels between Natalie and Henry’s relationship and Diana and Dan’s became clear as both men declared their devotion to the women they loved, raising the question of whether the next generation has a chance of emerging stronger from the battlefields of the past. 

Cenon Caramanzana’s (CC ‘24) choreography brilliantly utilized the limited space of the small stage, creating intimate moments while simultaneously dramatizing disorder. This worked well with the impeccable set, designed by Nathan Zepeda (CC ‘26), which utilized multiple levels of platforms to add depth and complexity to the set. A brilliant moment came when Lomboy descended from the ladder at the back wall of the theater to reassert his existence after Diana’s electroshock therapy. 

Keen attention was paid to the little decorations in each “room”: Yale merch in Natalie’s room, a calendar that was stuck in the past in the kitchen, the bathroom with the shelf of pills carefully placed, and much more. One’s eyes were never bored when looking at the set. An interesting addition to the stage lighting (designed by Nalyah Deloatche, CC ‘27) was color-changing LED lights lining the stage and some of the platforms, which reflected the tone of each scene. 

The audience was placed in a three-quarter seating arrangement, creating a sense of intimacy that increased our emotional engagement with the family’s plight. However, the actors were blocked so as to primarily face the front as they sang and acted, and several scenes that took place downstage were impossible to see, especially if one happened to be sitting behind one of the coat racks that formed part of the set. Those sitting on the sides were, though, able to see a screen depicting the conductor (Mimi Gillies, CC ‘25) who was leading the pit, stationed in another room, their sound being routed into the theater through ingenious technology. 

Paiz wrote in her director’s note that she aimed to create a show that was “led by and made for students of color.” Paiz described it as “comforting, and even more importantly… validating.” This was clear in the way the production team handled such sensitive subject matter and still allowed the musical to be a safe space to explore identity—identity of race, mental illness, gender roles, etc.—all these domains were tied to another. 

Supported by a cast with no weak links, Next To Normal shone as a painfully beautiful tribute to the hard parts of family and the wonderful ones as well. With its eerily relatable depictions of a fractured family searching for a way to mend, the music left not a single heart untouched; there wasn’t a dry eye in the house by the end of the night, and the standing ovation was instantaneous. Though some of the themes were shocking, CMTS treated the sensitive subject with care, creating a space in which the audience was safe to mourn, exult, and find healing along with the performers. It was everything musical theater should be. 

Gina Brown, Shaina Sahu, and Grace Novarr contributed to this review. 

Kieran Lombay as Gabe via Olivia Kuan-Romano