UNDER the uncompromising and aggressive logic perpetrated in Theatre Workshop's D.A.R.E., there is a sense that condemning Robert Rae's show out of hand would give the participants more satisfaction than a mealynouthed approval that took proper liberal account of the participants' physical disabilities. Luckily such a choice does not come up. Apart from the occasionally dragging pace (ironically a result of its use of computer technology),'D.A.R.E. is by any standards a galvanising and brilliantly inclusive act of political theatre, guaranteed to draw a line in the way its' audience considers disability. At times you worry that it doth protest too much in its assumption that non-disabled life is entirely populated by patronising body-fascists, but this virulent, scattershot approach ensures that targets are comprehensively hit. D.A.R.E. stands for the Disabled Anarchists Revolutionary Enclave, a group of cyber-rebels with mythical names who plot and execute extreme acts against what they perceive as a growing perception that the age of designer genetics is already being applied to the eradication of the genes that cause disease and physical incapacity. The four characters, thoroughly inhabited by Nabil Shaban, John Hollywood, Jim McSharry and Daryl Beeton, have their own agendas, cunningly and often very powerfully organised in the devised computer screen andive-action script, and although they are bitterly divided over each other's motivation, they come together to proclaim the right for disabled people to escape the stigma of humans gone wrong. Their point - that it is often the best intentioned people who reinforce such a consensus most securely - is a difficult one to absorb, and the show's success is measured by the thoroughness and angry grace with which it rams the truth home.

Back to What the Papers say....

© 1997 jinghiz@msn.com

---

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page