Kait Kerrigan & Bree Lowdermilk’s The Mad Ones, directed by Emily Susanne Lloyd, plays at The Other Palace until June 1. Book Tickets.
The Mad Ones is a culmination of more than a decade of work for the songwriting team Kait Kerrigan and Bree Lowdermilk. After starting life as The Unauthorised Biography of Samantha Brown, it’s been through multiple iterations, including an off-Broadway run, a separate studio cast album that developed an online following during the pandemic and a run last year at the Old Joint Stock in Birmingham before arriving at The Other Palace.
Sam, an anxious teenager, sits alone behind the wheel of her car for the first time and reflects on the events of her senior year of high school.
Caught between the impulsiveness of her free-spirited best friend, Kelly, the influence of her overbearing mother, Bev and her affection for her dorky, good-natured boyfriend, Adam, the seemingly clear path for her life as a class valedictorian bound for Harvard is abruptly thrown into disarray after Kelly’s sudden death in a traffic accident.
Smaller and more introspective than other recent teen musicals on the West End like Mean Girls or Clueless, the show follows Sam as she tries to survive the devastating loss she’s experienced and make sense of what she wants from her life. The four-person cast forms a tight vocal ensemble that gives the nebulous concept of conflicting psychological influences in a person’s life a tangible form on stage.
The intimacy of The Other Palace’s studio adds to the sense of psychic claustrophobia that comes from replaying and re-examining a traumatic event from every possible angle. Dora Gee and Courtney Stapleton have great chemistry together as Sam and Kelly, with Stapleton, in particular, conveying the vulnerability beneath the vivacity that draws Gee’s Sam towards her. Thea Jo Wolfe and Gabriel Hinchcliffe deliver on both the emotional weight behind their characters and the more comedic numbers that serve as a welcome counterbalance to the heavier elements of the story. Wolfe is particularly funny when she tries to course-correct on her helicopter parenting after realising that she might be part of what’s holding Sam back.
Some elements of the plot feel a little thin. Together, the songs and book could have provided Kelly with additional backstory. More specific details about the presumed Middle America setting would also have been beneficial. However, the show has broad appeal through its universal themes, and there is a definite draw for teenage audiences who will relate to Sam’s struggle to carve out an independent adult identity for herself.
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