Mad Spirit: Meet the wildest new theatre company in town

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Felicity Green in Serious Money Rosy Addison-Dunne Martin Robinson 1 minute ago COMMENTS Serious Money, Carolyn Churchill’s dazzling examination of Thatcher’s big bang on the financial world full of sex, power and corruption – think Rivals only with the Stock Exchange instead of TV studios - is back onstage in London, at The Courtyard Theatre in Hoxton. Not one of the biggest stages for a production which has a cast of 12 playing over 40 characters in a sprawling near-3 hour epic – told in rhyme! - but one which reflects the ambitions of the new company behind it: Mad Spirit Productions.

Created by brother and sister duo Douglas and Charlotte Taylor, Mad Spirit are doing things differently. Despite being a young company, their attitude is about going large, with work that is playful, adventurous and yes – as anyone who has been to the show will attest – really rather mad.

“I think one of the best things about laughter in a room is that it brings us all into the same space mentally and physically, we all find this connection,” says Charlotte, “Laughter can be such a bizarre visceral thing and it’s somewhere where we all meet when we find something funny. When that happens in a room, I think that's magic.”

“We're named after what Oberon says to Puck in Midsummer Night’s Dream,” says Douglas backstage after the show a few nights ago ( Serious Money runs until 19th September, so be quick ), “’How now, mad spirit! What night-rule now about this haunted grove.’”

Which kind of says it all for a clearly driven yet playful pair who are creating these almost childlike worlds and then inviting actors and audiences to immerse themselves in it. Their family is from Serbia and moved to the UK during the war, where they, “moved around different council houses.” Their father became a cab driver but the children went in different directions – Charlotte studied under Philippe Gaulier at his clown school in France, while Douglas studied literature at Oxford. After doing their own things for a few years, they finally decided to go all-in on their own theatre company, beginning with a production of Midsummer last year. Immediately they had a different approach to your average company:

“We did it on the Midsummer solstice in Hackney Wick woods. We had 15 people, musicians, fairy lights, no budget, all in the woods, and had a transfer of that. Then we did the Scottish play six weeks later, a cast of 13 who were also manning the bar. With each, it was a combined thing with me and Charlotte: I'm really into literature and fidelity to the text – so our Shakespeare is like, you're doing Midsummer, so you're in the woods - and Charlotte introduced clowning and play into that, and have games that allow performances freedom within that kind of academic rigour.”

Serious Money now follows exactly this approach. Courtyard Theatre is close to the financial district, and Douglas stresses the importance of remaining site specific.