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This really is a show for Rachel – not for the audience, although you’re welcome to join in. And what she creates is so much richer than a simple piece of theatre.Summary
Rating
Excellent
I don’t know why I’m writing this review because director Rachel O’Mahony won’t care. Hers is not primarily a show for the audience, as her sister and artistic director of Zoo Co Flo O’Mahony points out very clearly in the introduction: it’s all about Rachel and what she wants. We’re here for her. Working together with Lee Simpson‘s improvisation specialists Improbable, Rachel’s instructions create not only a fun entertainment, but a whole load of joyous specialness also emerges.
Rachel has a learning disability, so to direct her cast of ten she uses a bespoke desk with 50 buttons triggering different scenes for them to perform. She may or may not choose to use any of them, in whatever order she feels like. Sometimes repeatedly. The power is all hers. This puts the audience in a rather unfamiliar space, as it gives a disabled person the authority to make creative choices – a situation quite different from the norm. As we are invited to acknowledge and accept Rachel’s unique vision, we also learn to shift our understanding.
The highly talented cast of musicians, dancers, singers and actors are required to perform whatever their director tells them to; but as Rachel’s mind works differently to most, the end result is unusual. What’s created is a show heavy on slapstick comedy, water pistols and energetic music, as pre-prepared scenes are fused together, a little differently every time depending on how Rachel selects things. It’s not high drama, but it is riotous fun, with a strange surrealism to it.
Rachel clearly enjoys being in control, supported by her mum (Wendy O’Mahony). And it’s not just a matter of her randomly pushing buttons to get monkeys to dance: she’s making decisions about how things run, visibly reading the audience’s responses before deciding what to do next. This idea of mutual interpretation is underscored throughout the fabric of the production, which demonstrates many methods that enable understanding of others. Rachel’s words are transcribed live, and the cast must listen carefully for her instructions, leaning in to work out what she wants or needs. BSL is used, along with captions projected on the walls, and there’s a feeling that Rachel, the cast and the audience are all learning each other’s languages and a new way of being together.
Rachel’s choices celebrate having fun with friends, enjoying music, laughter, and playfulness. Her selection of music is upbeat and participatory, encouraging us all to stomp together to ‘We Will Rock You’. Raucous, funny entertainment it may be, but Perfect Show for Rachel is only partially about the content of the performance. More important is what the director creates in the room alongside it, through her unique being, in a creative company that genuinely cares about what she wants to do. Her choices make us, the audience, active, and the participation immerses us in a different world vision – a world full of love, care and inclusion, where Rachel’s disabled friends and their silly humour are endorsed; elevated onto television. My favourite moment was when her mum was lifted up high and paraded across the stage; a moment of worship. Can’t we do this for everyone?
Rachel’s show is a wide, inclusive space, where the disabled are given visibility, validity and accepted unconditionally. And it’s a different normality for the non-disabled present, where people are prepared to be whacked, humiliated, to look silly, simply because it entertains and supports someone else; someone who in a normal framework is routinely underrepresented. When we give ourselves up to Rachel’s world, we become part of a glorious way of being; selfless, collaborative and mutually supportive. It’s perfect.
You can read more about this show in our recent interview with Flo O’Mahony here.
Presented by the Barbican
Co-produced by Zoo Co and Improbable
Directed by Rachel O’Mahony
Lead artist Zoo Co: Flo O’Mahony
Lead artist Improbable: Lee Simpson
Perfect Show for Rachel plays at Barbican Centre until 9 June. Further informtion and bookings available here.
