Laurence Clark - 12% Evil?

Published Thursday 16 August 2007 at 17:40 by Ben Dowell

Any vaguely sentient being ought to leave this stupendously funny and thought-provoking show with their sides split and their minds buzzing. Laurence Clark has a wit drier than the Navajo desert, a control of timing that would put Seiko to shame and scores upon scores of fizzingly funny one-liners.

He also has cerebral palsy, and his show brilliantly confronts and dissects all the prejudices and patronising put-downs he has experienced throughout his life with aplomb, good humour and a mastery of Powerpoint. Why, he begins by asking, are the disabled always associated with baddies and evil (like “my fellow wheelchair-user Davros”), or simply losers who never get the girl, like Quasimodo? For Clark, these negative attitudes are everywhere, from Star Wars to The Secret Garden.

And then there’s the thoughtless pity, a point brilliantly tested with a filmed skit which takes a begging bucket onto London’s streets. It is a triumphant conclusion to a show where Clark laughs at the world and himself (commenting on a film of him bungee jumping, he says there is “something so so wrong but so so funny about a spastic falling off a bridge”), impressing upon the able bodied quite how thoughtless we can be and how much of our own fears and insecurities we project onto disabled people.

I cannot praise this show enough. It is brilliant.