Review: It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad Madge, The Glitch

In what could be a first for me, I left It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad Madge without knowing what to say. It’s certainly experimental and bold, trying to portray the real Margaret Cavendish – a seventeenth century literary rebel who was labelled mad by some of her shocked critics for her non-conformity. In fact, Madge herself notes: “This show should be received not as a piece of theatre but probably more a piece of art.” And that’s one of art’s quirks – some people love it and some people hate it. For me, in this case, it is the latter.

To begin with, this musical is a solo performance, with Esmée Cook (alternating shows with Anna Hale) combining performance art with stand-up and music. It is a commendable achievement to be the sole focus of attention for the full hour running time. Maddie Maycock’s lighting design is cleverly created to shift through the series of twists and turns of Madge’s mental state. It’s also an innovative idea to utilise a loop pedal to add effects like echo to the vocals, and build a soundscape through the repeating lines and vocals, creating the mad world Madge is living in.

The show opens with a combination of arpeggiating synths, dissonant piano chords and repeating vocals. This suddenly stops as the house lights come up and Madge acts like nothing just happened: “Good evening, welcome to my live resurrection.” The problem, though, is that this trick is used over, and over again, and it becomes quite tedious.

Fintan Kealy’s music is all synths; often not very melodic, making it very difficult for the performer to sing to. The vocals as a result come across as quite strained and at times hard to listen to. The confusing mixture of subject material goes from asking “Will you be my daddy?” to the actual Margaret Cavendish poem A World Made by Atoms. This is – by itself – an interesting example of being experimental, with Cook harmonising with the pre-recorded backing track. But in the context of the show, it has no real relevance and doesn’t seem to blend together.

There are plenty of attempts at audience interaction, with a song about the “non-diegetic tones of Ariana Grande”, and again Madge uses a loop pedal to take responses from audience members and incorporate them into the music. But it often went a bit wrong and we were left with vocals entirely out of time with the pounding electronic backing track, creating an uncomfortable mess. If this were more practised, it could be an interesting technique, although I still feel too heavily overused.

As well as the jarring soundtrack, the stage itself also features a small sandpit. And I couldn’t get my head around this. There are extensively long moments where we simply watch Madge in silence playing with sand or throwing it around or kicking it across the floor. It is never clear what the purpose is.

The writing itself does address the lack of structure and cohesion. Madge says to the audience: “We’ve made absolutely no attempt to create any narrative arc or character development of any sort.” So, after the show ended, it simply left me questioning what the point of the whole thing was. I always want to encourage new, experimental art, and it is great to see work having a space to play with ideas. In the case of It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad Madge though, to me it is an experiment that doesn’t pay off.

Written by: Clare Packham and Fintan Kealy, in co-creation with Anna Hale
Directed by: Clare Packham
Musical Direction by: Fintan Kealy
Lighting Design by: Maddie Maycock
Produced by: PINCHY Theatre

It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad Madge plays at The Glitch until Monday 10 March.