La Mama: The Madness of the Day

Within a tiny white-washed room – reminiscent of a clinic – we are confronted with ‘B,’ a mysterious man approaching the age of 80, who discovers a story entitled The Madness of the Day in his desk.

The text itself, written by Maurice Blanchot, was cited by Derrida as “a story whose title runs wild and drives the reader mad” and served as a springboard the performance. John Flaus’s ‘B’ is an uncertain and isolated individual, and B’s perpetual curiosity about the space around him and the text he holds, drives the performance, with all its silences, stillness and repetitions.

The Madness of the Day is Beckettian, in that it functions to throw the experience of the performance back onto the spectator. We question why we have encountered this character and our confusion is not unlike his. Co-devised by Flaus, director Laurence Strangio and designer Meg White, Madness holds contemporary resonances with the experience, confusion and chaos surrounding Alzheimer’s.

However, that is a single interpretation of the performance, which for its part did not seek to limit its source material to a single meaning, but rather allowed for a proliferation of readings; a discourse on madness, insanity, old age and the human experience to name a few.

There is a great amount of control throughout Flaus’s physical score, his pace gives a fluid inbuilt rhythm to the performance and creates an unfamiliar world. B’s score is only interrupted by blackouts, which seem to demarcate duration, or perhaps a kind of regression back into forgetfulness. The performance also achieved a smooth transition into the text, especially considering the pervading silence that precedes it (with the exception of an aural soundscape that is barely audible, but enough to transform the space).

Unfortunately, it was often very difficult to follow the precise movements of the text, both as a result of its complexity and the fact that it was mostly read from a sheet; as if the paper from which ‘B’ was reading barred the audience’s entry into the story. This meant that the spectator was either made to concentrate enormously on the text, or as sometimes happened, would give up, shifting into a daze. This latter experience may have been intentional, a throwback to the music of Phillip Glass or the texts of Samuel Beckett, but the performance lacked the function of repetition or playfulness and so the text often jarred the performance. Ultimately though, initiating this effect on the audience was successful insomuch as it created a shared experience between spectator and character.

The Madness of the Day is not without its own surprises, particularly for the observant, and within the set there are a few intricate nuances to enjoy. White’s design took advantage of the architecture of the La Mama Theatre space, notably the fireplace, and transformed the space to make it feel like the audience was observing B though one-way glass.

Finally, the pay-off towards the end of the experience tops the entire show. After lulling the audience into a false sense of security, The Madness of the Day effectively surprises us, breaking the boundaries it had formerly established and we are left as confused as the protagonist. We leave the theatre to re-construct the images from our memory and continue to explore its implication on us.