When I first heard the original cast recording CD of the musical "Next to Normal," I was knocked out by it. Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt’s Pulitzer-winning rock opera about mental illness and pharmacology was like nothing I’d ever seen heard, and I couldn’t wait to see it live

on stage. A couple of years later, when the touring production came

to San Francisco - with original star Alice Ripley in the role that won

her a Tony - I was disappointed, underwhelmed by the phoned-in performances and too-slick roadshow blandness of the enterprise. But I still liked the way the story unfolded and the power of music, and I held firm to the belief that, under the right circumstances, Next to Normal could be as good on stage as it was in my headphones that first time I heard it.

Who knew that a community theater production in Novato would be the one to prove my faith was justified.

Under the sensitive and sometimes brilliant direction of Kim Bromley, Novato Theater Company’s full-emotion-ride staging of the Next to Normal is intimate, accessible, and raw - and the cast of skilled, emotionally committed performers just act the hell out of it.

In Bromley’s hands, the melodramatic bombast of the touring production has given way to an understated yet still effectively intense experience, keeping the humor alive while never blinking in the glare of the play’s harsher observations about the cost of mental illness on the families and loved-one’s of the afflicted.

Actress Alison Peltz is astonishingly good as Diana Goodman, a middle class wife and mother who seems fairly typical as the play begins. She’s a little bored with her life, she’s amiably at odds with her teenage children, she’s unable to sleep some nights - but otherwise, she seems okay. Then, without warning, Diana has a full-on psychotic break, manically building jam sandwiches on the kitchen floor as her family watches with weary dismay. That’s when we realize that this is not the first time Diana has gone around the bend, and that her daughter, the over-achieving brainiac Natalie, is terrified that she may eventually end up like her mother. As played by a sensational Julianne Thompson, Natalie is a vividly drawn character, written and performed in three-dimensions, warts and wall, and Dianna’s bland-but-devoted husband Dan, played beautifully by Anthony Martinez, is a wonder of conflicting impulses, devotion pushed to breaking point. Dianna’s son Gabe, played by a forcefully present Fernando Siu, is the only one who seems to accept his mother’s illness, and clearly prefers his mom off her meds to on, and that push-pull relationship proves to be at the foundation of Dianna’s struggles.

And it is Dianna and her battles with the world and her own brain chemistry that stands at the heart of this remarkable musical.

After 16 long years of daily medicinal treatment, her bipolar disorder is beginning to exhibit schizophrenic symptoms as well. Over Gabe’s protests, she agrees to try a new doctor, the rock-star psychiatrist Dr. Madden, played by a first-rate Sean O’Brien.

It’s a major part of the play’s power that Diana’s subsequent journey through a series of therapies - including electroshock, portrayed as a power-rock dance-dream sequence - is treated with a stunning lack of judgment or preachiness.

Novato Theater Company deserves much praise for tackling this play so well, and for doing what the touring show couldn’t - presenting these characters as real, identifiable people, whose ragged pain, wounded love, and biting sense of humor are as highly relatable as they are deeply inspiring.

"Next to Normal" runs Friday–Sunday, through April 27 at Novato Therater Company. Novatotheatercomapny.org