The Mad Ones NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (90)
See it if You like relatable, accessible music. You like to see good singing, well directed in a small minimal stage. Great band, nice orchestration.
Don't see it if You mind screeching. The lead sometimes oversings but she has a delicate soft modulation so the screech can be unlearnt. You want BIG.. Read more
See it if you like to see 4 talented singers perform as a team. Also some wonderful lighting.. And Jack K. lives again. H.S. to Univ. prob lives ..
Don't see it if If you need more scenery or if you never faced the H.S. graduate problems.
See it if You liked next to normal or dear evan Hansen. Has a vibe of both if stripped down. Amazing performances. Needs tweaks but still loved it.
Don't see it if You don’t like emotional stories about high schoolers and teen angst.
See it if You want to see a new musical (or if you've seen this show in another form before, and you're interested in what changes have been made).
Don't see it if You don't like diverse musical influences, or have a hard time relating to young people.
See it if You're a fan of great singing in a story that speaks to the place of women today
Don't see it if you don't like plays without an intermission or are looking for a traditional big musical with a chorus and dancing
See it if The score is very strong and the performances are terrific. Nicely staged and I loved the use of the harp.
Don't see it if Nice coming-of-age show that's great up until about the last 20 minutes-it should have been cut by about 10. I really enjoyed it though.
See it if you want to discover & become a fan of Kerrigan and Lowdermilk
Don't see it if you hate newfangled pop musicals, want a big orchestra sound, dislike indecisive protagonists Read more
See it if You loved Evan Hansen and the angst of millenials
Don't see it if Your not interested in the pressures applied to young adults as they confront the next portion of their lives
Critic Reviews (17)
“A fun and heartfelt musical road trip through a young woman's mind...What carries the show is the relationship between Sam and her best friend...The chemistry is quite effective...Occasionally a sort of ‘concert tone’ takes over, and all this musical flair begins to detract from the story...A fun show with great music and an honest message about being your own person...If you like new musical theatre at all, or even just good music in general, don't miss ‘The Mad Ones.'”
Read more
"Directed by Stephen Brackett, if you’re of a certain age you’ll most likely relate to the woes of youth as presented here in 'The Mad Ones.' Kerrigan and Lowdermilk surely have a way with words and lyrics and there are some genuine laugh out loud moments...The downside: the show attempts too strenuously to get its points across but it doesn’t always work as words crisscross and lines become blurred."
Read more
"The premise is striking and very uniquely investigated within the smart book and songs by this fantastic writing team. The numbers are powerful and fantastically crafted and performed, but the intricate details become a bit foggy as the piece accelerates forward. The songs, although majestically sung, start to blend into one another, losing the distinction of meaning and purpose between them...As written, it’s still an impressive venture and one we were glad to go on."
Read more
“A coming of age story that is propelled by the Jack Kerouac’s iconic 1957 novel ‘On the Road’ but laden with clichés, superfluous situations and a skimpy script that tries to invent reasons to perform fourteen musical numbers...The musical numbers are written in the Broadway belt fashion and after a while acquire a sameness that diminishes the crisis or turmoil at hand. The cast is nothing less than remarkable...Not an unpleasant experience but nothing exceptional or groundbreaking.”
Read more
“A well-performed, small-scale, dramatically inert new musical…The fuzzy narrative has very little punch, the effect being more an episodic assortment of emotional reactions to various stimuli than dramatic actions. Too much teeters not only on the brink of over-familiarity but on the banal…Kerrigan and Lowdermilk's score favors songs requiring big, belting voices, which the company very capably provides…Well sung as the songs are there's a sameness to them that blends one with the other.”
Read more
"Samantha takes about 90 or 100 minutes to dither, which isn’t very engagingly dramatic. She and the others do become dramatic when singing about their various emotional conditions, and these accomplished singers frequently maximize those moments. But it’s not the same thing as raising the dramatic stakes—only repeating Samantha’s predicament so that the Kerrigan-Lowdermilk songs begin to sound too much like each other."
Read more
“It’s an intriguing but empty shell, a husk of a musical from which the nourishing substance inside is inexplicably absent. This is a pity. Everyone involved clearly has talent, including the authors...The piece itself appears attractive and solid while it’s going on, but the solidity vanishes in retrospect...Nor does ‘The Mad Ones’ offer a compelling male alternative to balance this one-dimensional female dialectic."
Read more
“A musical of both youthful exuberance and heartbreak...The cast has the pipes to carry the show beautifully...Most of the songs are very good: catchy and fun or serious and soulful. There is an over reliance on the metaphor of a car as freedom, which grinds after a while...The sparse direction of Brackett is perfect for the space...It is a spare story in a spare space and he allows the actors to fill it with pathos and song."
Read more