I brought a friend who has spent time in a psychiatric hospital to see “Next To Normal,” and was startled at intermission when he reacted exactly the way that Allen Ginsberg had when I brought the poet to see “Rent.”

The cast then had just finished the song “La Vie Boheme,” where they’re dancing on the table, drinking toasts to bohemians, including:

To anything taboo
Ginsberg, Dylan, Cunningham and Cage
Lenny Bruce
Langston Hughes
To the stage

I’m not sure he even heard his name being sung, but in any case it was the song right before the intermission and as soon as the lights went up, he delivered his two-word critique:

“It’s loud,” he said. He insisted I take him home.

Some 13 years later, right after the song in “Next to Normal” called “A Light In The Dark,” where Dan gets his wife Diana to sign the consent form for electric shock therapy, the lights went up for intermission, and my friend gave his reaction: “It’s loud.”

I don’t know if it’s ironic or not that both “Rent” and “Next to Normal” were directed by Michael Greif.

In any case, this time, I was not pressured to leave, and, I was able to prod my friend into elaborating:

“This is not an appropriate subject for a musical,” he said. “A musical is light, like ‘Mary Poppins,’” and the rock music of the score seemed to offend him, as if it trivialized his experience. “It’s hard to make a musical about mental illness; it sounds like a joke just to say that.”

“Is the problem that it’s rock music,” I asked, “or is the problem that there’s any kind of music?”

“Both,” he replied.

“Not all musicals are light,” I said. “What about ‘Rent’? That deals with AIDS and gentrification and …”

“I didn’t see it.”

“What about Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Assassins,’ about the people who assassinated or attempted to assassinate the presidents of the United States?”

“I haven’t heard of that one, but it seems an odd subject for a musical.”

I thought of some of the musicals with serious subjects — “West Side Story,” which is after all about prejudice and poverty and urban gang warfare; “Floyd Collins,” the musical at Playwrights Horizon a few years back about a man trapped in a cave in Kentucky; the new musical in London, Imagine This , about Jewish actors in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II who decide to put on an original musical about Masada, where a relative handful of Jews in Biblical times held out against the Roman Army but eventually committed mass suicide rather than surrender; not a light subject. Can anything be an “odd” subject for a musical when so many musicals have handled such grimness?

I didn’t argue anymore. My friend is educated, not unsophisticated, goes to the theater maybe four times a year; saw and liked “August: Osage County,” has tickets to see the four-hour “Othello.” I suspect that his view of Broadway musicals (what they are; what they should and should not be) is–dare I put it this way?– normal.

But I don’t think it is, or should be, accurate. Before it was on Broadway, “Next to Normal” was part of the New York Musical Theater Festival, the 2009 version of which is being presented from September 28th to October 18th. I looked over this year’s list of 30 full productions. Ok, yes, there are shows involving vampires, and musicals with titles like “Gay Bride of Frankenstein,” and productions about serial killers and the bubonic plague and executioners’ sons that I suspect are light, campy fare. There is even a musical entitled “Lighter.” But about a third of the shows seem to be dealing seriously with serious subjects:

“All Fall Down” considers the aftermath of a college student’s suicide attempt.

“Hurricane” looks at “one of New England’s greatest natural catastrophes,” a hurricane that occurred in Rhode Island in 1938.

“Max Understood” is about a seven-year-old boy with autism.

In “Mo Faya,” a DJ is lured away from his Nairobi community and a real estate developer attempts to take control. To quote from the description: “When the government and media turn a blind eye to the decapitated bodies in the streets, DJ Lwanda must return home to expose the truth.”

“Street Lights” is said to depict “inner-city teenagers coming together to take back their community center from the drug dealers who now control the neighborhood.”

“Under Fire” looks at a photographer in a corrupt Latin American country in the 1970’s.

Isn’t a musical about a depressing subject in itself something of (like the song in “Next to Normal”) a light in the dark?

During the second act of “Next to Normal,” I watched the show, but also thought about my friend’s reaction. What he had called loudness I felt as energy, intensity, a convincing simulation of raw feeling that to me is much of what the theater is supposed to be about. But the musical is not just raw; there is a subtlety and cleverness in the lyrics. Alice Ripley in the role of Diana sings:

My psychopharmacologist and I…
Call it a lover’s game.
He knows my deepest secrets.
I know his…name.

Not all the songs are hummable tunes, but opera has its melodic arias and its narrative recitatives, and this is a rock opera. But how could anybody not be moved by the piercing verse sung by Jennifer Damiano as Diana’s daughter Natalie in “Maybe”:

I don’t need a life that’s normal
That’s way too far away.
But something…next to normal
would be okay.

When “Next to Normal” was over, and we walked outside, my friend told me he had changed his view a little. “I liked the second act better. It wasn’t as flashy. It seemed more heartfelt.” And, he said, he could relate to it more personally, especially the support the family tries to give to Diana. He quickly added, “I was affected by the story itself, more than the execution of it.” He seemed to want to make clear he was not a convert, not an enthusiast for a serious rock musical. But he had become something…next to one, and maybe that’s okay.

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