"Next to Normal" could turn out to be this year's "Avenue Q" — the small, original musical that started at a not-for-profit theater off Broadway, then bumped the blockbusters out of the way to take the top Tony Award. So says Paul Sheehan, a veteran Tony pundit and frequent contributor to The Envelope.  He thinks that though the revised version of "Next to Normal," which opened to rave reviews this week, won't be in the running for either the Outer Critics Circle or Drama Desk awards due to disagreement about its eligibilty, it can still do well with the Tony Awards.

Of the original new shows on Broadway this season, only two seem certain to be among the final four Tony Award nominees for best musical. The West End transfer "Billy Elliot" earned respectful reviews last fall for the performances, the staging, and Elton John's original score. And the upcoming "9 to 5" promises loads of toe-tapping songs penned by Dolly Parton, who starred in the original movie and wrote the Oscar-nominated title track. Both these tuners are adaptations of hit films and are certain to run for a long time both on Broadway and, just as importantly, on the road.

"Next to Normal" is not an adaptation of a proven commodity like those shows and "Wicked" (which lost to "Avenue Q" in a big upset five years ago). Rather, as Ben Brantley of the New York Times said in his rave review, "This brave, breathtaking musical focuses squarely on the pain that cripples the members of a suburban family, and never for a minute does it let you escape the anguish at the core of their lives. 'Next to Normal' does not, in other words, qualify as your standard feel-good musical. Instead this portrait of a manic-depressive mother and the people she loves and damages is something much more: a feel-everything musical, which asks you, with operatic force, to discover the liberation in knowing where it hurts."

For Brantley, "Such emotional rigor is a point of honor for 'Next to Normal,' sensitively directed by Michael Greif and featuring a surging tidal score by Tom Kitt, with a book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey. With an astounding central performance from Alice Ripley as Diana Goodman, a housewife with bipolar disorder, this production assesses the losses that occur when wounded people are anesthetized and not just by the battery of pharmaceutical and medical treatments to which Diana is subjected, but by recreational drugs, alcohol and that good old American virtue, denial with a smile."

Other critics agreed with him, chief among them Michael Kuchwara of the AP who said, "There are no easy answers to be found in 'Next to Normal,' a startling, emotion-drenched musical about one family's attempt to cope with mental illness. The show is an impressive achievement, a heartfelt entertainment that has found its way back to New York after an invaluable out-of-town retooling." He singled out Alice Ripley as "giving one of those fearless performances that is astonishing in its theatrical intensity and vocal commitment. Watching her unravel is a harrowing experience, as are the woman's attempts to combat her problems with pills, shrinks and electroshock therapy."

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