Picture: Sam Taylor
A Super Happy Story (About Being Super Sad) is available via Stream.Theatre until 11 July 2021.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
Jon Brittain’s multi-award winning work for Silent Uproar (including Best Musical – The Musical Theatre Review Award, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, 2017) has been immortalised on film as directed by Matthew Titterton. Alex Mitchell’s direction of the stage show placed the audience so centrally to the storytelling in the original production that it would be fair to raise concerns about how this would translate to the screen. Not a jot of worry as the ‘screen audience’ is closely directed and drawn to Madeleine MacMahon’s central performance as Sally MacKenzie.
A great deal of Sally’s dialogue and all of her songs are directly addressed to the audience. She’s confiding in us, telling her story warts and all, daring us to be allowed to be happy yet learning a great deal about depression. MacMahon’s performance is flawless: her Sally earns the ear, heart and mind of the audience. Her highs and her lows are revealed with an honesty that disarms us. We simply love her. The use of filming techniques, varied angles and the scanning across the screen guides a film audience with the most effective and affective direction: we become emotionally invested.
From the upbeat opening number, MacMahon is supported by Sophie Clay and Ed Yelland in a variety of roles as Sally’s story is told. Using her 16th birthday as the context for the first scene, we find out about Sally’s love of music and her thrill at seeing bands perform live. At this gig, just as a photo is taken, Sally feels the unease of something ‘not quite right’ for the first time. Despite support from friends, family and her music, Sally’s life falls prey to depression.
From then, the lighter moments still come through, often through music, and have a poignancy as we see Sally’s struggle. Matthew Floyd Jones’ music underscores and links the short scenes that relate episodes from the years that follow and the songs offer a commentary that sometimes relates to her inner thoughts and sometimes becomes a direct address to the world at large. And the broad humour keeps the show on the ‘happy’ side of ‘sad’.
The penultimate scene is profoundly moving and sensitively filmed – tissues advised. It brings us to Sally’s 26th birthday night out when a face from the past urges her to tell the story so that more people begin to understand what it is to be depressed and to respect the struggle that it takes to live with it.
When you need one thing that makes you feel better A Super Happy Story (About Being Super Sad) may be the perfect fit.
Fiona Orr
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