A Super Happy Story (About Feeling Sad) – The Lowry, Salford

Writer: Jon Brittain

Director: Alex Mitchell

Musical Director: Matthew Floyd Jones

Reviewer: Andrea Allen

A Super Happy Story (About Feeling Super Sad) describes itself as “a hilarious cabaret show about depression that explains, sings, and throws glitter about how it’s ok not to be ok”. On paper, it sounds like car crash potential, the kind of show where the curtain will fall on half the audience it came up on and will have toes curling en masse across the seating banks. Actually, it turns out the blurb is pretty accurate, but the above assumption couldn’t be further from the truth, and the blurb’s writer can be forgiven because the challenge of describing this flawlessly honest, perfectly timed, intermittently heart-breaking and heart-warming show from Silent Uproar in a couple of sentences can’t have been an easy feat.

This should be essential viewing for everyone and anyone, even those who “don’t like musicals”. If you haven’t experienced depression before, you’ll learn something. If someone close to you has experienced depression, you’ll recognise, relate and perhaps understand better. And if you suffer from depression, it hits the nail on the head, and you might feel a little less alone. Madeleine MacMahon is superb as protagonist Sally, while Sophie Clay and Ed Yelland are equally captivating and hilarious, flitting between various characters, costumes and song numbers without missing a beat.

Musical director Matthew Floyd Jones, best known from cabaret act Frisky and Mannish, provides a hilarious score which has the whole audience in stitches but still jabs in all the poignant places where required while director Alex Mitchell masterminds a slick delivery which evokes both the funniest and the most harrowing elements of Jon Brittain’s sharp, truthful script. A fantastic show, impeccably executed by an immensely talented cast and creative team. So yeah, it’s ok not to be ok, but this show doesn’t have anything to worry about.

Runs until 20 October 2018 | Image: The Other Richard