next to normal

Next to Normal is coming to St John's Garden Quadrangle Auditorium on Saturday 21 November and Sunday 22 November. It's a musical that's made a fair bit of a name for itself, picking up three Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and it's finally making its way to Oxford for a short run.

The show centres on a family dealing with mental illness, and it doesn't shy away from the heavier side of that. It looks at grief, love, and the ways people hold each other up when things get difficult, so it's more of a character study than a light musical. If you've ever found yourself thinking about how families navigate the things they can't quite talk about, that's exactly where this sits.

There are three performances in total. On Saturday 21 November, you can catch a matinee at 2.30pm or an evening show at 7.30pm, and then a final evening performance on Sunday 22 November at 7.30pm. The venue is the Garden Quadrangle Auditorium at St John's College, on St Giles in the city centre, so it's easy enough to get to on foot if you're already in town.

Tickets are £12 or £7, plus a booking fee, so it's a fairly accessible price for a show with this kind of pedigree. With the matinee and evening options on the Saturday, you've got a choice of when to see it, and the Sunday evening run gives you one more chance if the weekend gets away from you. It's a short run, just two days, so it's worth deciding which slot works best for you.