Every 15 years or so, the American musical veers in a new and unpredictable direction. When it works, it inspires a wave of imitators. Phantom and Les Miz spawned a decade of bombast. Rent added urban flava and moved gay life and issues to the forefront. Something tells me Next to Normal, which debuted on Broadway less than four years ago, is the model for the next wave. Its pop-rock score, by Tom Kitt, won a 2009 Tony, as did its lead actress. Its book, by Brian Yorkey, began as a 10-minute diatribe against the mental health industry but developed into an all-too-believable portrait of a middle-class family in crisis.

We find Diana Goodman waiting up for her teen-aged son while her insomniac daughter Natalie does calculus homework. As her husband Dan sings the next morning, it's "Just Another Day" in workaday suburbia. What we haven't figured out is why Diana's so distracted. She has a better idea than we do, but even her shrink, the ironically named Dr. Madden, can't get a handle on her dysfunction, prescribing one cocktail after another of happy pills. Because yeah: this musical goes there. Diana's mentally ill, and it's unclear whether trauma some years ago brought on these troubles or they already existed, depriving her of the ability to cope.

Read Christian Carvajal's full review of Next to Normal in the Weekly Volcano's Arts section.

CAPITAL PLAYHOUSE, NEXT TO NORMAL, THROUGH FEB. 17, WEDNESDAY-SATURDAY 7:30 P.M., SUNDAY 2 P.M. $28-$39, 612 FOURTH AVE. E., OLYMPIA, 360.943.2744