A Super Happy Story (About Feeling Super Sad) was performed at the Young Vic Theatre, London as part of the venue’s Shedinburgh season.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
There is something immediately disarming about A Super Happy Story (About Feeling Super Sad). Everything about its appearance suggests an hour of uncomplicated fun: glitter, sequins, music and a cast determined to make the audience smile. Yet beneath all that brightness is a story about depression, and the contrast between the two gives this intimate musical much of its impact.
Written by Jon Brittain with music by Matthew Floyd Jones, the show first appeared at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2017 when it became the inaugural winner of Musical Theatre Review’s Best Musical Award. For Shedinburgh, director Alex Mitchell brings it back in a deliberately stripped-back form, with just three performers and Jones at the piano.
At its centre is Sally (Madeleine MacMahon), who insists that she is a happy person. What follows is not so much a story about sadness as one about the unpredictability of living with depression. Sally can still find herself unable to cope, even when life is going perfectly well. That distinction is important, and Brittain’s writing makes it without turning the musical into a lecture about mental health.
MacMahon gives Sally an instantly likeable, open quality. There is a wonderful sense of enthusiasm to her performance, which makes the moments when that energy disappears all the more noticeable. Crucially, she never allows Sally to become defined entirely by her illness. She remains funny, frustrating, hopeful and sometimes messy – a person rather than simply a representation of depression.
Sophie Clay and Ed Yelland take on the many characters surrounding her, switching roles at an impressive pace. The simplicity of the staging makes those transformations part of the fun, with very little needed to establish an entirely different personality. Both bring plenty of comedy to the piece, while Yelland’s Toby also gives the story one of its most important relationships.
The musical’s humour is perhaps its most effective tool. There are moments when it feels almost ridiculous to be laughing considering where the story has just been – or where it is about to go – but that uncomfortable combination feels entirely intentional. The production never suggests that depression means an absence of happiness. Instead, very funny and very painful moments are allowed to sit beside each other.
Jones’ songs continue that contrast. Performed with an almost aggressively cheerful cabaret energy, they keep the production moving and prevent the darker material from becoming overwhelming. The stripped-back Shedinburgh setting suits the piece particularly well, placing the emphasis firmly on the performers and the storytelling.
If anything, the show’s greatest strength can occasionally become its weakness. Its determination to make such a complicated subject accessible means certain moments are dealt with more simply than they might be in a longer piece. At only 60 minutes, there is little time to sit with some of Sally’s experiences before the story moves forward again.
But A Super Happy Story is not trying to explain every aspect of depression. What it does particularly well is show how difficult it can be to recognise from the outside, and how someone’s happiest moments do not necessarily tell the whole story.
There is no miraculous solution waiting at the end, either. Instead, the show finds hope in something much smaller: continuing, accepting help and understanding that life does not have to be perfect to still contain things worth enjoying.
Bright, silly, sad and surprisingly affecting, award-winning theatre company Silent Uproar’s A Super Happy Story (About Feeling Super Sad) earns its optimism rather than forcing it. Beneath all the glitter is a simple but worthwhile reminder that feeling sad and having a happy life are not necessarily opposites.
Claudia Vinatea
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