Review: NEXT TO NORMAL at Round House Theatre
The painful slow journey for understanding as to what normalcy or perceived sanity is --when a family member is suffering from bipolar illness--- is explored with heartbreaking poignancy, almost brutal honesty and with deadpan caustic humor in the musical Next to Normal. Now playing at Bethesda’s Round House Theatre, this almost totally sung-through musical caught me up in its oddly satisfying emotional pulse. I fell into its compelling pull as the trauma of a family experiencing the highs and lows of bipolar illness unfolded.