Natalie Walker: Mad Scenes

Marginally beloved Lucille Lortel and Drama Desk Award-losing character actress Natalie Walker first (and last) put on 3 performances of her show Mad Scenes in 2021 after emerging from the plague quarantines, and it was hailed by Stephen Mosher at BroadwayWorld as a "genius night of revelry, a night filled with magnificent, magical moments [...] created with the audience experience firmly at the forefront of an artistic mind", and by a well-intentioned theater professional friend (who surely did not know this quote would be wielded intrusively by Natalie's inner saboteur for months to come) as a "perfect example of why I can't really imagine what anyone would actually cast you in". She then retreated to flop in private for several more years while telling herself it was an academic investigation she was conducting for Mad Scenes' next iteration -- a more thorough research study of the art of psychological freefall that would be worth it eventually.

Now, buoyed by receiving not one but two entire Jobs in the American Theatre last season, she is ready to resurrect the desiccated corpse of Mad Scenes with many of the old parts but also lots of shiny new appendages to illustrate the passage of time. On October 22, accompanied by her music director/accomplice/enabler Dan Garmon, Natalie will once again take the audience on a tour from hebetude to hysteria, O'Hara (Neely) to Ophelia (needy), Lucia to Liza, Beale to Bensimon, and back again.

Photo Credit: Sylvie Rosokoff