‘Next to Normal' Review: A Musical Worth Mulling on PBS

Wall Street Journal

08-05-2025

In 2019, The Wall Street Journal's longtime drama critic performed the dazzling, rarely seen critical 180 on 'Next to Normal,' the 2008 Brian Yorkey–Tom Kitt musical that had won a Pulitzer Prize, knocked out most of his colleagues and left him to 'bristle.' Revisiting the show as mounted by David Cromer ('America's greatest stage director') for the Chicago-area Writers Theatre ('America's finest regional theater company'), he found much to praise. It wasn't a rave, but he saw that Mr. Cromer had located a truth in the work that had previously been left untapped.
It would be a very welcome thing to know what Terry Teachout, who passed away in 2022, thought about the 'Next to Normal' being presented by the PBS platform 'Great Performances,' as staged last fall at London's Wyndham's Theatre. Surely, a show about bipolar disorder, death, grief, medical ethics, electro-shock therapy and family dysfunction was never going to be the feel-good TV spectacular of 2025. But time has been more than unkind.