The Mad Show, rather than having any all-encompassing narrative, was an off-Broadway review show based upon the popular satiric MAD magazine. The original show ran for over eight hundred shows, opening on 09 January 1966, at the New Theatre, New York City.

The magazine had itself gone through various stages of popularity with its parodies of popular culture and politically satirical content. Two of the contributors to the magazine Larry Siegel and Stan Hart wrote the book for the review with the score being provided by Mary Rodgers, except for the parody of ‘The Girl from Ipanema’, ‘The Boy from...’ which was written by Stephen Sondheim.

Humour is a very personal affair and to be honest, I never really found the humour of MAD travelled well outside of the United States, with its emphasis on American cultural and political icons and the same can be said about the review, with its many references to American figures, most of who will be long dead now.

With the distance of time, the best that can be said for most of the songs is that they are mildly amusing; this is not helped by the fact that many of the references will now be obscure. I also wonder just who the review was aimed at. A lot of the songs are sung from the perspective of children, often dealing with helpless and hopeless adults, so it’s unclear if the show, written and performed by adults was meant to appeal to teenagers, and if not would an adult audience react well to being the objects of derision? I guess the number of show attests to the fact that enough adults shared the joke to make the show a success.

As a review the recording contains both sketches and musical numbers. Some of the songs still resonate well, including ‘Well it Ain’t’ a fake protest song, in the style of Bob Dylan, which highlights the absurdity of wealthy pop stars complaining about the injustices in the world, while they make fortunes which could feed many of the poor.

‘Hate Song’ is typical of most of the songs, which starts with a call for less violence, prior to descending into a graphically violent description of what the kids would do with hate. It’s a deliberately jolly number with xylophones used to highlight the song's wackiness. It is also a little camp, but then in the late sixties, camp was very popular.

The song which has survived best is ‘You Never Can Tell’, a nice waltz which turns bad behaviour on its head, for example you steal the rosary beads off a nun only to discover she was a Russian spy, it’s a catalogue of bad deeds which turn out well. The full listing for the recording is as follows:-

Act I

'Overture', 'Academy Awards for Parents', 'Eccch!', 'The Boy From...', 'Well It Ain't', 'Misery Is', 'Handle With Care', 'Hate Song'.

Act II

'Entr'acte', 'You Can Never Tell', 'Real Thing', 'Looking for Someone', 'Kiddie TV', 'The Gift of Maggie (And Others)', 'Football in Depth', 'Finale'.

Even given that the show was a child of its time, there are a lot of comics working in the sixties which were infinitely more funny than this. Still, it represents a slice of comic history, so is interesting from that perspective, if no other.

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Charles Packer