Some shows arrive at the Fringe with hype; Next to Normal arrives with history. It’s a piece that has never sat quietly in the corner, never softened its edges, never pretended that mental illness or grief can be shaped into something tidy. Dominic Lewis seems acutely aware of that. When he talks about the Goodman family, he doesn’t reach for the usual theatrical shorthand. He talks about them the way you talk about people you’ve lived alongside — complicated, contradictory, trying their best, failing, trying again.

What struck us most is the seriousness of his intent. Not the heavy, self-important kind, but the grounded sort that comes from knowing the material can genuinely touch people who’ve lived versions of this story. Lewis isn’t interested in turning bipolar disorder into a plot engine or grief into a poetic flourish. He’s interested in the messy truth: the repetition, the avoidance, the love that curdles into fear, the care that becomes silence because nobody knows what else to do. His rehearsal room sounds like a place built with actual thought — not just emotional ambition, but practical care for performers who may be carrying their own histories into the work.

And then there’s the wider frame. The partnerships with Bipolar Scotland and Held In Our Hearts aren’t window dressing. They’re part of a deliberate attempt to make sure the production doesn’t just stir something up and leave audiences to deal with it alone. Lewis talks about community theatre not as a consolation prize but as a space where proximity matters — where the people making the work are part of the same streets, the same conversations, the same quiet crises as the people watching it.

As Next to Normal heads into the Edinburgh Fringe 2026, this interview feels less like a preview and more like an invitation to look again at what we call “care,” what families are expected to carry, and what healing might mean when truth finally stops being the thing everyone tiptoes around. It’s not neat. It’s not meant to be. But it feels, unmistakably, necessary.

Next to Normal has always been a lightning rod for conversations about mental health. What responsibilities did you feel taking on a story that deals so directly with bipolar disorder, medical treatment and the long shadow of loss, and how did you avoid slipping into cliché or sentimentality?

The responsibility felt enormous, to be honest. Next to Normal is not a show where mental health can be treated as a dramatic device, or where grief can be reduced to something neat, poetic or conveniently resolved by the end of the evening. It asks much more of everyone involved.

The first responsibility was to remember that although the Goodman family are fictional, the experiences around them are not. Bipolar disorder, trauma, complicated grief, medical treatment, family breakdown, emotional avoidance and survival are all things that many audience members will understand personally, either through their own lives or through someone they love. That means the work has to be truthful without becoming exploitative, detailed without becoming clinical, and emotionally open without pushing the audience into a kind of forced sentimentality.

For me, avoiding cliché meant resisting any version of Diana that becomes simply “the ill woman”, “the difficult mother” or “the tragic victim”. She is all sorts of things at once: funny, intelligent, frightened, loving, furious, avoidant, lucid, unwell, self-aware and trapped. Equally, Dan cannot just be “the long-suffering husband”, and Natalie cannot just be “the neglected daughter”. The danger with a show like this is that people become symbols. We have tried to keep pulling them back into being people.

In rehearsal, that has meant constantly asking: what is this person trying to do in this moment? What are they protecting? What truth are they avoiding? Where is the love, even when the behaviour is damaging? That keeps the story human. It stops the production from presenting mental illness as spectacle or grief as a beautiful sadness. Grief is not beautiful when you are inside it. It can be disorientating, repetitive, irrational, boring, exhausting and sometimes even absurd. The show understands that, and we have tried to honour that complexity.

The other big thing was not to make the production anti-treatment, anti-medication or anti-clinical care. That would be a misreading, and frankly it would be irresponsible. The show is much more interesting than that. It asks what happens when treatment exists but care becomes fragmented, when someone’s symptoms are addressed but their personhood is not always fully seen, and when a family tries to survive through silence rather than truth. That nuance is where the production lives.

The press release emphasises “emotional truth, care, accessibility and audience signposting.” How do you translate those values into practical rehearsal-room decisions, especially when working with performers who may have lived experience of the themes?

Those values only matter if they change behaviour in the room. It is easy to put words like care and accessibility in a press release. The real question is whether they affect the process.

Practically, we have tried to build a rehearsal room where people understand that the work can be emotionally demanding, but that nobody is expected to damage themselves in order to make it powerful. I am very clear that acting trauma is not the same as re-living trauma. We are not asking performers to mine their own pain for the sake of a scene. We are asking them to build characters with clarity, technique, empathy and rigour.

That means being specific. If a scene is difficult, we do not just say “make it more emotional”. We look at the action, the relationship, the rhythm, the breath, the interruption, the avoidance, the lyric and the silence. Often the most truthful moments are not the ones where someone pushes hardest.

Care also means giving people the information they need. We talk openly about the content of the show, the pressure points in the material, and what each rehearsal is likely to involve. We have tried to create a culture where people can say if something needs to be handled differently, without it becoming dramatic or awkward. That is particularly important when working on material that may overlap with lived experience. You cannot always know what someone is carrying into the room, so the room has to be built with that possibility in mind.

Accessibility and signposting are part of the same principle. We know the show may land very personally for some audience members, so we are thinking about what happens before and after the performance, not just during it. That includes clear content guidance, programme information, and working with organisations who understand these themes in a much deeper and more specialist way than we do. We cannot control how every person will receive the show, but we can take responsibility for how we frame it, how we support it, and how seriously we treat the conversations it may open up.

Diana’s story is often framed as a critique of the medicalisation of distress. How does your production navigate the tension between clinical intervention and the human need for connection, agency and dignity?

The important thing for me is that the production does not present those things as opposites. Clinical intervention and human connection should not be enemies. In the best circumstances, they should support one another.

What Next to Normal interrogates is what happens when care becomes too narrow. Diana is treated, but she is not always fully heard. Her symptoms are examined, but the emotional architecture of her life, her grief, her family and her sense of self cannot be solved by diagnosis alone. That does not mean diagnosis or medication are wrong. It means they are not the whole story.

The production tries to hold that tension without simplifying it. Diana needs help. The family needs help. Dan needs help. Natalie needs help. But help that removes agency, flattens identity or ignores the human context can become another kind of harm, even when it is well-intentioned.

Dignity has become a key word for us. Diana is sometimes chaotic, sometimes evasive, sometimes deeply unwell, but she must never lose her dignity in the eyes of the production. We are not inviting the audience to observe her from a distance. We are asking them to sit with the discomfort of how difficult it is to care for someone, how difficult it is to be cared for, and how easily love can become control when people are frightened.

The show is also very honest about the limits of love. Connection matters, but love alone cannot treat a serious mental health condition. At the same time, treatment without connection can leave someone feeling like a case rather than a person. That is the central tension for me. Diana needs care that sees her whole life, not just her crisis.

Bare Productions is collaborating with Bipolar Scotland and Held In Our Hearts. What does meaningful partnership look like in practice, and how do you ensure it’s more than a badge of good intentions?

For us, meaningful partnership starts with humility. We are a theatre company. We are not a mental health charity, a bereavement charity or a clinical service. So if we are making work that touches these areas, we have a responsibility to connect with people and organisations who live in that work every day.

The partnerships with Bipolar Scotland and Held In Our Hearts are not there to decorate the production. They are there because the themes of the show have real-world consequences. Bipolar Scotland brings vital awareness and understanding around bipolar disorder, stigma, support and the realities behind a condition that is still widely misunderstood. Held In Our Hearts brings deep care around baby loss and grief, which sits at the emotional root of the Goodman family’s story.

In practical terms, this means making space for signposting, sharing information with audiences, including the charities in our programme materials, and being careful with the language we use around the production. It also means understanding that partnership is not the same as endorsement. We should not hide behind charity logos and say, “That proves we have done the work.” The work is ongoing.

I think meaningful partnership also has to ask: who benefits? If the production raises awareness, but does nothing to direct people towards support, then we have missed an opportunity. If it uses painful subject matter to sell tickets, but does not take care over how audiences are held, then it has failed ethically. Our aim is for the production to create a bridge between the emotional experience of theatre and the practical reality of support, awareness and conversation.

It is also important to say that charity partnership does not make the show safe in a simplistic sense. The material is still difficult. It should be. But it does mean we are taking seriously the fact that audiences may leave with questions, memories, or feelings stirred up. We want there to be somewhere for that energy to go.

Next to Normal is, at its core, a family drama. What did you discover about the Goodman family that feels especially resonant for audiences in 2026, when conversations about trauma, care and survival are finally becoming less taboo?

What feels painfully resonant is that the Goodmans are not a family without love. They are a family with a huge amount of love, but not enough language. That feels very contemporary.

We are much better now, culturally, at saying words like trauma, grief, mental health and survival. That is progress. But naming something is not the same as knowing how to live with it. The Goodman family are caught in that gap. They are surrounded by feelings they cannot metabolise. They know something is wrong, but each of them has built a different survival strategy around it.

Diana’s survival is partly denial, partly memory, partly resistance. Dan’s survival is control, optimism and holding the family together at almost any cost. Natalie’s survival is achievement, distance and anger. None of these strategies are stupid. They make sense. But they are also damaging.

That feels very relevant in 2026 because so many families are trying to have more honest conversations about mental health, but they are doing it inside systems and histories that still reward silence. Families often become the place where care happens by default, whether or not anyone inside that family is equipped for it. The show asks what that does to people.

The thing I keep coming back to is that the Goodmans are not failing because they do not care. They are struggling because care without truth becomes unbearable. Everyone is trying to protect everyone else, and in doing so they isolate each other. That is a very recognisable family pattern, even outside the specific circumstances of the musical.

The show asks what it really means for a family to heal. Do you think healing is possible within the structures we currently have, or is the musical quietly arguing for something more radical?

I think the musical is deeply sceptical of neat healing. It does not offer the audience the comfort of a restored family where everyone has learned the lesson and pain has been tidied away. That is one of the reasons it remains such a powerful piece.

Healing, in Next to Normal, is not a return to the past. In fact, the desire to return to the past is part of what keeps the family trapped. Healing is closer to truth. It is the painful movement from pretending towards acknowledging. That does not fix everything, but it creates the possibility of something more honest.

So yes, I do think the show is quietly arguing for something more radical. Not in a slogan-led way, but in its emotional politics. It asks us to imagine care beyond endurance. It asks whether one person, one marriage, one family home can really hold the weight of serious mental illness, bereavement and trauma without wider support. It asks what we expect families, and often women in particular, to carry privately.

The structures we currently have can help people, absolutely. Treatment can help. Therapy can help. Medication can help. Community can help. But the show exposes what happens when support is fragmented, reactive or inaccessible, and when families only reach for help once they are already at breaking point.

The radical idea in the show is that survival is not enough. Being “fine” is not enough. Holding it together is not enough. Healing requires truth, agency, support, and sometimes the courage to let a family become something different from what it was. That is a much harder version of hope, but I think it is also a more truthful one.

Community theatre is often dismissed as “amateur,” yet your company’s work is described as ambitious, inclusive and values-led. What can community-rooted companies say about mental health and grief that commercial theatre often can’t?

Community-rooted theatre can speak from proximity. That is its power.

Commercial theatre can do extraordinary work, of course, but it is often shaped by commercial risk, marketability, celebrity, critical expectation and the pressure to package difficult themes in a way that can be sold. Community-rooted companies can sometimes move differently. We are not detached from the communities watching the work. We are part of them.

For Bare, the word “community” does not mean lowering artistic ambition. It means widening the purpose of the work. We are interested in making theatre that is artistically strong, but also socially connected. With a show like Next to Normal, that matters. Mental health and grief are not abstract topics for discussion. They are part of ordinary life. They sit in rehearsal rooms, workplaces, friendships, families and audiences.

Community theatre can also challenge the idea that only certain kinds of people are allowed to make “serious” work. Lived experience, empathy, care and local connection are not second-best substitutes for professionalism. They are forms of knowledge. That does not mean good intentions are enough. The work still has to be rigorous. The singing has to be strong. The staging has to be clear. The ethics have to be thought through. But the root system is different.

I think community-rooted companies can say: this story belongs in the room with us. It is not distant. It is not rarefied. It is not something happening to other people. It is here, in the city, in our families, in our friendships, in the audience. That creates a different kind of charge.

The musical’s rock score is famously intense and emotionally charged. How do you balance musical precision with the rawness the story demands, especially in a Fringe environment where time and space are tight?

The balance comes from understanding that rawness and precision are not opposites. In a score like Next to Normal, the rawness only really lands if the structure underneath it is secure.

The music is relentless. It demands stamina, accuracy, emotional intelligence and real trust between performers. If the cast are fighting the music technically, they cannot live inside the scene truthfully. So we have spent a lot of time treating the score as both music and text. The notes matter, the rhythms matter, but so does the thought underneath every phrase.

In rehearsal, I am interested in where the music interrupts normal behaviour. This is a domestic drama, but the score allows the pressure inside the family to erupt. Sometimes the music is what a character cannot say. Sometimes it is what they are trying not to know. Sometimes it is the speed of panic, or the force of memory, or the exhaustion of pretending.

The Fringe environment makes that more intense. You do not have endless time, endless space or endless technical resources. But that can also be clarifying. We have to ask what each moment is really about and strip away anything decorative. The Sanctuary at Paradise Green gives us an intimate relationship with the audience, so we do not need to push for scale all the time. The emotional size of the piece can come from focus.

My job is to create enough precision that the performers feel safe to be emotionally brave. If the staging, music and storytelling are held tightly, then the cast can risk more. Controlled does not mean cold. It means the production has a spine.

Next to Normal blends domestic realism with a high-energy rock score. What do you think this musical language allows you to express about mental health and family life that a more traditional score couldn’t?

The rock score allows the inner life of the family to become theatrical without becoming polite. That is crucial.

A more traditional score might risk smoothing the edges of the story. Next to Normal needs a musical language that can be jagged, obsessive, funny, furious, tender and overwhelming, sometimes within the same number. Mental health does not always move in clean emotional arcs. Family conflict does not always arrive in well-shaped sentences. The rock language gives the show volatility.

What I love is the collision between the ordinary and the extreme. This is a family in a house, dealing with school, marriage, doctors, dinner, birthdays, routines. But underneath that domestic surface, the emotional volume is huge. The score lets us hear that. It turns subtext into sound.

It also captures the way a family system can become rhythmic. People repeat patterns. They interrupt each other. They avoid the same subjects. They return to the same wounds. The music reflects that. It can feel like thought spiralling, memory returning, panic accelerating, or love trying to force its way through a blocked room.

For me, the score says that mental health and grief are not quiet subjects just because people often suffer quietly. Inside, they can be deafening. The rock score gives that inner noise a form.

If audiences leave the Sanctuary at Paradise Green talking about one social issue raised by your production, what do you hope it is, and why that one?

I hope they talk about the fact that care cannot sit solely inside one family.

That feels like the central social issue for me. The show is about mental health, grief, treatment and family, but underneath all of that is a question about where care is expected to happen, who is expected to provide it, and what happens when those people are already breaking.

The Goodman family are not untouched by support, but they are still profoundly alone in many ways. That loneliness is not just emotional. It is structural. It reflects how many people experience mental illness, bereavement and crisis: as something that becomes private very quickly, even when it is too big to be held privately.

If audiences leave talking about that, then the production has done something useful. Not because theatre should provide policy answers, but because theatre can make us feel the human cost of questions we sometimes discuss too abstractly. Who gets believed? Who gets supported? Who gets exhausted? Who disappears inside someone else’s crisis? Who is allowed to say they cannot cope?

I would love audiences to leave moved by the family, but also unsettled by the wider implications. The musical does not ask us simply to pity Diana, admire Dan, worry about Natalie or mourn what has happened to the Goodmans. It asks us to look at the whole ecosystem of care, silence, stigma and survival.

For me, that is why the piece still matters so much. It is not only asking, “How does one family heal?” It is asking, “What kind of world would make healing more possible?”

You can find out more about the show and buy tickets here