Aftershocks: The Lingering Devastation of Paradox Opera’s Next to Normal
Review by Celeste Markey
The Tony Award-winning rock musical Next to Normal opens with “Just Another Day,” a number that stages the rituals of daily life—breakfasts made, schoolbags packed, medications sorted—to present the image of an ideal American nuclear family. As the scene progresses, however, the title takes on a bitter irony. What first appears to depict ordinary domestic routine gradually reveals something far more precarious: a performance of stability sustained against grief, mental illness, and emotional collapse. The Goodman family inhabits this instability at every level. Beneath the motions of everyday life, grief quietly corrodes the household from within, transforming normalcy into an exhausting façade rather than a lived reality.
Durham-based company Paradox Opera, directed by Eric Love, captured this illusion of stability with remarkable precision. Rather than treating the musical’s emotional devastation as spectacle, the production grounded it in the quiet repetition of survival: strained routines, fractured communication, and the relentless effort to continue living amid unresolved grief. The cast’s cohesion lent the family dynamic a painful authenticity, creating a household that felt loving, exhausted, and perpetually on the verge of collapse.
This commitment to emotional care extended beyond the stage. Paradox Opera partnered with A Different Attitude Counseling to provide mental health resources for audience members, with (much-needed) tissues made available in the lobby. Together, these choices underscored the company’s engagement with the realities the musical depicts.
Much of the production’s emotional power emerged from the extraordinary collaboration between the cast and onstage musicians. In a musical so dependent on emotional volatility, Paradox Opera resisted melodrama in favor of restraint, allowing tension to accumulate gradually through performance, rhythm, and silence.
Kelley Keats anchored the production as Diana Goodman, capturing both the carefully maintained charade of the “ideal” mother and the instability simmering beneath it. Her mature, assured voice remained remarkably controlled throughout, allowing emotional intensity to emerge without sacrificing musical clarity. In “Who’s Crazy,” she conveyed Diana’s growing disorientation with mounting urgency, while “I Miss the Mountains” balanced longing and emotional numbness with devastating subtlety. Opposite her, Dylan Elza brought a clean, powerful tenor and magnetic intensity to Gabe Goodman, transforming “I’m Alive” into something both seductive for Diana and deeply unsettling for the audience. More than a son, Gabe emerged as the embodiment of the grief and illness haunting the family, a presence made even more chilling when Elza’s unseen voice surfaced from the darkened audience during “Aftershocks.”
The rest of the Goodman family proved equally compelling. Despite being twice the age of the seventeen-year-old she portrayed, Alissa Roca was instantly captivating and entirely believable as the withdrawn, intelligent Natalie Goodman, capturing both the character’s simmering frustration and desperate search for stability amid her family’s chaos. She also demonstrated sharp comedic timing as a pill-shaking assistant in “My Psychopharmacologist and I.” Roca’s chemistry with Gwen Hyland’s Henry felt entirely natural. Hyland brought a grounded, effortlessly charming presence to the role, particularly in “Hey #1” and “Perfect for You,” where her understated humor and easy rapport with Natalie established the character’s warmth without forcing it. Vocally, Hyland impressed with remarkable evenness across registers, maintaining clarity and control throughout the role’s shifting range, while her perfectly timed “oh no” during Natalie’s piano recital breakdown landed as one of the production’s sharpest comedic beats precisely because of its restraint.
Bradley McBride grounded Dan Goodman in controlled understatement, fully inhabiting the well-meaning father trying—and often failing—to hold his family together. His clear, effortless vibrato lent warmth and stability to the role even as Dan’s emotional footing steadily eroded beneath layers of denial and routine. McBride’s “Song of Forgetting” felt especially emotionally precise in its depiction of a family struggling to hold onto shared memory, while in “I Am the One,” his pointed refusal to acknowledge Gabe sharpened Dan’s isolation and need for control.
Christopher Fotis brought crisp precision to the dual roles of Dr. Fine and Dr. Madden, using crystal-clear diction and a lightly buoyant vibrato to distinguish the two personas. As Dr. Fine, he approached “My Psychopharmacologist and I” with fast-talking clinical exuberance that captured the exhausting repetition of Diana’s treatment regimen. As Dr. Madden, both his voice and demeanor settled into something steadier and more humane, particularly in “You Don’t Know (Reprise),” where his attempt to reorient Diana after ECT balanced professional detachment with genuine compassion.
The onstage instrumental musicians provided the production’s emotional and structural backbone, sustaining the volatile shifts between intimacy and emotional rupture that define Tom Kitt’s rock-infused score without overwhelming the singers. Under Alex Thompson’s steady leadership at the piano, the ensemble maintained a restless momentum that allowed moments of vulnerability to emerge even during the score’s most explosive passages, giving the production a lived-in emotional texture rather than something merely polished. Keenan Jenkins’ guitar blended tightly with the piano, particularly in “Didn’t I See This Movie,” while Vince Moss’ nuanced percussion drove the score with energy and rhythmic control. TJ Richardson’s bass provided a steady foundation, though a stronger presence in the mix would have given the production greater depth in its lower register. The strings proved somewhat less consistent: on cello, Emma Caterinicchio occasionally struggled with projection, tone color, and intonation, while Allison Willet’s violin lines, though solidly performed, sometimes felt underutilized within the overall arrangement.
What lingered after the performance was not the musical’s devastation alone, but its recognition of how exhausting survival can become when grief is never allowed to settle into the past. Paradox Opera understood that Next to Normal is not ultimately about spectacle or breakdown, but about the quiet terror of waking up each day and performing normalcy for the people you love. By the final moments, I found myself less overwhelmed than emotionally hollowed out— the production leaves behind the unsettling realization that survival itself can become a form of tragedy.
About the author
Based in Cincinnati, Celeste Markey maintains a dual career as an orchestral clarinetist and instructional designer. Her writing interests include music, theater, and the emotional architecture of performance.
More at www.celestemarkey.com.