The Stage

Thalidomide!! A Musical

Published Wednesday 9 November 2005 at 11:50 by Nuala Calvi

Mat Fraser’s new musical about ‘one monster baby’ and his search for ‘non-flipper love’ is designed from the outset to shock and shake its audience out of their toe-curling discomfort about disability.

It is also quite aware - and enjoying the fact - that it will outrage many with its politically incorrect language and its revelling in the freakish.

Fraser plays Glyn, a boy with Phocomelia - flipper-like hands - the same Thalidomide-triggered condition as himself. His co-star Anne Winslet (sister of Kate) is his childhood sweetheart who finds herself turned on by his short arms.

Their love story is set against the backdrop of the Thalidomide scandal of the sixties, in which 450 babies of British mothers who had taken the morning sickness drug were born with impairments.

Songs with titles such as It’s Hard to Hitch Down Life’s Highway With No Thumbs, Talk to the Flipper and I Can Be His Arms are set to an eclectic mix of musical styles, from country to ska, with Fraser and his co-star expending enough energy for a 20-strong production as they tap dance, salsa and tango through the show.

The two actors take on all the other roles in the production, such as the evil Nazi doctor who first developed the drug and the distraught parents who lament the birth of their monster babies, meaning that Fraser has to be inventive with props when he plays the longer-armed characters. One of the most hilarious - and unsettling - moments of the night is seeing Fraser performing a jazz-hands showtune with broomsticks and stuffed gloves protruding from his shirt sleeves, followed closely by Winslet donning over-long prosthetics which swoop forlornly over the heads of the audience.

Having already been branded shocking by one local newspaper in Wolverhampton - where it is due to visit as part of its tour - and derided as sick and exploitative by one Lib Dem local counsellor, Thalidomide!! A Musical could become the next Jerry Springer if it gets picked up by someone with the cash to give it the production value it deserves.