The Freed Center for the Performing Arts opened its 2025-26 season with an original musical titled The Mad Ones. In case you couldn’t attend, or if you’re interested in more insights from the show, this is our in-depth analysis of one of the most unique and technically impressive productions hosted in the Stambaugh Studio Theatre in recent years. We were invited to watch the dress rehearsal of the “Drive” cast for The Mad Ones.
This article was written by Carys Williams and Gabriel Mott.
The Freed Center for the Performing Arts opened its 2025-26 season with an original musical titled The Mad Ones. In case you couldn’t attend, or if you’re interested in more insights from the show, this is our in-depth analysis of one of the most unique and technically impressive productions hosted in the Stambaugh Studio Theatre in recent years. We were invited to watch the dress rehearsal of the “Drive” cast for The Mad Ones.
Cast of Characters
- Sam, Protagonist
- Sam is a high school senior who is struggling to decide what she’s going to do with her life.
- Kelly, Sam’s Best Friend
- Kelly is also a high school senior, and has decided her only concern is living in the moment.
- Adam, Sam’s (Ex-) Boyfriend
- Adam is a lot of comic relief, but is also a genuinely sweet person who wants the best for Sam.
- Beverly, Sam’s Mother
- Beverly is a caring mother, but is dead set on Sam attending an Ivy League school.
Setting the Stage
The Mad Ones focuses on Sam Brown, a book-smart, not-so-street-smart, high school senior who’s caught between who she is and who she wants to become. While alone in her car on the night she’s meant to leave for university, Sam hoons through memories of her best friend, Kelly Manning, the fearless, “life of the party” teen who lives like every moment is meant to be raced toward. Adam, Sam’s tender, eager boyfriend who offers her a future that promises kindness, and Beverly, Sam’s high-achieving, doting, and intelligent mother who loves by reading her car accident statistics and baking her cookies, both exist as Kelly’s foil. Beverly sees Sam as a strong, capable, Ivy League-bound woman who’s going to change the world, and Adam sees Sam as his soulmate, who he only wants the best for. Kelly’s aggressive spontaneity pulls Sam to the edge of her comfort zone, toward long drives, impulsivity, and the idea that life isn’t something you wait for–it’s something you claim.
When Sam weighs each of these voices, the car she sits in reaches a crossroads: Adam’s steady affection reminds her that she’s worthy of being loved exactly as she is. Beverly’s ambition urges her toward safety, structure, and the path that promises success. Kelly’s echo whispers that the world is bigger and far more hers than she’s ever allowed herself to believe. Through this inner journey, Sam confronts the truths she’s been too afraid to face–about loss, identity, relationships, and choice. The audience follows her as she sifts through doubt and memory, collecting the pieces of who she’s been molded to be and who she might dare to become.
Style and Tone
From the moment we walked into Stambaugh before the show, we were struck by how well such a small set could be utilized to set a unique mood. The semi-geometric black-and-white pattern on the floor reminded me of the iconic dream sequences from Twin Peaks, while giant road signs painted on the floor next to the audience felt deliberately out-of-place and larger-than-life. Contrasting pink and green lights coming from the ceiling, as well as lighting from below the stage, set a vibrant but somewhat surreal tone before the production had begun. At some moments, lone incandescent lights dangling from the ceiling provide meager illumination to the scene.
Costuming was simple but effective. Between the teenagers, ripped jeans expectedly signify a character ready for rebellion and adventure, while plaid shirts correspond to slightly more reserved or cautious characters. Sam’s mother, Beverly, adds a pink boa to her costume mid-performance, corresponding with her embracing the exciting opportunities of life.
Musically, we have absolutely no notes. Perfect job. The mix of slow, serious personal ballads, somber harmonies and comic relief felt appropriate for a coming-of-age story. Likewise, the choreography was effective, and we never felt that it was “out of sync” with the music, either technically or tonally. Likely due in part to the limited set, a significant amount of choreography was mimed without props, such as sitting on the edge of the raised stage and extending one’s hands to a nonexistent steering wheel to signify driving a car (more on that later).
Overall, “Variety” is definitely the most appropriate non-category to describe the style and tone of The Mad Ones.
Themes and Motifs
You may be able to guess some common themes for the story of an anxious teenager going off to college, and these are true here as well. Here are the three that stood out to us the most:
Uncertainty
The Mad Ones is noticeably thematically oriented around the uncertain future. This is rooted in the magnitude of decisions a character like Sam needs to make at this point in their life, such as where to go to college, whether to pursue a particular relationship, and even whether to simply “run away.” This serves as the central point of tension in the show. Kelly, Sam’s best friend/peer/bad influence, exhibits similar traits, insofar as her only interest is in living in the moment and, aspirationally, running away; Kelly doesn’t concern herself with the future, itself a form of uncertainty.
More subtly, Sam’s mother Beverly also has a significant personal relationship with uncertainty: she is a statistician. As Mark Twain said, “Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable”; the purpose of the field of statistics is to account for the uncertainty in life. This is reflected in Bevery’s impressive ability to recite from memory complex statistics related to Sam’s life.
This also reinforces the dynamic that Sam is being pulled in different directions by the two biggest influences in her life: while her mom tries to control uncertainty, her best friend embraces it, leaving Sam in the middle and (ironically) unsure how to even approach the uncertainty in her life.
Freedom
Another major theme and motif in The Mad Ones is freedom. This is also natural for a teenager at one of the biggest intersection points in their life. All three of the younger characters desire freedom in their personal lives, with Beverly drawing the sole contrast.
This compares well to the theme of uncertainty; the desire for freedom or for control of one’s life is a natural response to being faced with uncertainty, and it makes sense that both are most prominently displayed in our protagonist.
“Freedom” is also repeated throughout the show as a motif in the songs’ lyrics, especially when Sam is on center stage.
Driving/Travel
Everywhere you look in The Mad Ones, the road is waiting. Painted beneath the actors’ feet, held aloft in neon, or mimed by the cast mid-song, driving imagery is the heartbeat of the show.
One of the most compelling visual motifs of The Mad Ones, present on set at a disproportionate volume to its actual plot time in the show, is the repeated use of allusions to driving or roadways. Characters stick their hands out as if they are driving a car, even during musical numbers where this is not happening in-universe. Road signs are painted on the floor of the set, and some characters appear during musical numbers holding life-sized traffic signs. One musical number is cut off abruptly with the sounds of a car crash, corresponding in-universe to a sort of “snap back to reality.” More metatextually, the playbill for The Mad Ones features an illustration of a winding road.
So why use this as a motif? One key application is that through one brief snippet of dialogue, Kelly reveals that sometimes she goes driving just to drive, because she likes it. The character self-identifies this as simply living in the moment, but there’s another interpretation: Kelly doesn’t know where she’s going, either literally on the highway or in her life. This reinforces the dual themes of uncertainty and freedom.
By contrast, Sam is wary of the road. It’s worth noting that traffic signs are meant to direct; they establish rules we all have to follow. It makes sense that Sam would sometimes see her friends and family as traffic signs, each trying to tell her what to do. This gives new meaning to Kelly’s earlier piece of dialogue that when she is driving around aimlessly, she specifically doesn’t pay attention to the traffic signs; in this act, Kelly also affirms that she doesn’t pay attention to the people in her life telling her what to do.
Kelly’s death was tragic, moving, and foreshadowed to just the extent that it felt earned. The interrupting of a musical number with the sounds of a car crash is a brilliant piece of foreshadowing because it is striking and memorable, but doesn’t give away almost anything in terms of the plot. Although enough moments of dialogue were included that we were relatively sure by the end of the performance, the formal “reveal” with the audience hearing only Sam’s end of a phone call was thoughtful and perfectly executed.
Kelly’s death also gives the road more meaning as a motif. In addition to being her outlet for freedom, driving was ultimately the source of Kelly’s demise. In retrospect, Sam seeing her peers approach her as road signs, and her rejecting them by pushing them away from center stage, could also be interpreted as a haunting presence. In addition to resisting outside control of her life, she doesn’t want to think about her former best friend. Insofar as the show is told out of order, it is (we suspect deliberately) ambiguous what’s going on inside Sam’s head and what these apparitions mean each time they appear.
Interview with the Performer
Sam had these subtle moments in the show where it seemed like she was stuck in limbo—caught between the past and future, but not quite in the present. Flashes of memories and figures of the people she loves danced around the stage, holding traffic signs, foreshadowing the future and revealing Sam’s inner conflict: who she is, and who she wants to be.
I asked actress Belle Fockler how she felt connected with her character, Sam Brown.
“Sam’s anxiety, I feel like I relate a lot to that…sometimes she feels like she needs to make decisions based on what everyone else wants her to do, or things that’ll make other people happy and not things that are going to make her happy,” she explained. “I think a lot of young people feel that way with pressure from parents and other people.”
Belle further explained how she pulled experiences from her friends and family in real life, channeling her feelings toward them into her character. “I’m the only child, and Sam is, too. I think a lot of the relationship with Bev and Sam related to our experiences,” she noted. “I pulled more experiences in real life, like with Kelly; so many of my friends remind me of Kelly. A lot of the people that I’m friends with, they’re really great at pulling me out of my shell and bringing different colors of me out, just like Kelly does for Sam.”
She explained how she approached the grief portions of the show by picturing her friends in Kelly’s position, which was a deeply personal process for her. There was one scene in particular where Sam had just been intimate with Adam, her boyfriend, for the first time. This moment is exciting and special for Sam; that excitement is shattered when she gets a phone call from Bev, who breaks the news of Kelly’s passing. Belle explained how director Tim Savage and actress Ella Foose, who played Kelly, helped her prepare for those scenes. “Tim and I made sure that between each of those beats between the words, I clearly had it in my head what my mom was saying to me for each sentence. I think having the lines in my head that my mom was saying to me made it more real than just waiting to say the next line,” she said. “I just imagined it happening, especially Ella and I, we had such a deep relationship that we have forged through this show and in that moment, she was Kelly, and thinking of it actually happening to her.”
Belle’s preparation was well-worth it; this scene cut through us like a knife. Watching helplessly from the audience, unable to intervene when the phone rang caused a swirl of emotions. Before she picks up the phone, we see Sam in a dream, arguing with Kelly over whether or not to pick up the phone. This song, called “Moving On,” shows a dream-state Sam—one who knows what’s coming—begging her present self to confront reality. It’s the emotional climax of the show, and Belle’s raw, grounded performance made the audience feel every moment of Sam’s confusion and heartbreak. It captures exactly why this show stays with you: growing up means losing pieces of yourself, but it also means finding the strength to step into the future anyway.
In the final moments of the show, Sam does the one thing she’s been terrified of doing: she drives. Not to escape, not to imitate Kelly, not to appease her mother or boyfriend, but because she’s finally ready to push on the gas—to move forward. As she disappeared down the symbolic highway, we felt every mile of the journey she had to take to get there.