What starts as an audio-described introduction descends into a darkly comic pisstake. From disability-led theatre company FlawBored, this debut is an ensemble-devised satire of the commodification of people with disabilities, spotlighting the disingenuousness, the careless virtue signalling, and the unhelpful anxiety that frequently crop up in conversations around disabilities. The presentation has an easy-going charm to it, but this company is not afraid to make us squirm.
Through a series of meta sketches fuelled by corporate buzzwords and over-apologies, our three affable hosts (Samuel Brewer, Aarian Mehrabani and Chloe Palmer) drily mock the commercial mass-marketing of disabled identities. The storytelling is playful with a keen eye for experimentation, complete with interruptions from the captioner and moments where they step out of the show to plead with us not to cancel them on Twitter.
Their central story imagines a company desperately trying to counter accusations of ableism by hiring a blind influencer. These office scenes occasionally threaten to veer into the style of an educational workshop, but the trio are such easy presences on stage that it’s enjoyable to watch as their characters tangle themselves in knots trying to solve their missteps, snowballing to a catastrophic end.
Sharper and more deliciously uncomfortable are the scenes that take a step away from fiction and move into thorny reality. This comes as they innocently, unsettlingly question the attention their show received before anyone had seen it – were they just a token disability choice? – and again as they describe making this show with ever-more ridiculous ideas of ways corporations could capitalise on disability, only to find out they already exist. “Do you have any idea,” Brewer asks with a shake of his head, “what it’s like to be out-satired by real life?”
This leads them to thinking even more extravagantly, landing on a scene with a shocking, brutal description of self-harm. It jars wildly – painfully – from the rest of the show’s tone, yet labels this company as unafraid to push boundaries. With keen humour and nothing off limits, It’s a Motherf**king Pleasure is a bumpy ride but a bright beginning.
