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Performer-turned-playwright Francesca Martinez’s bold, sprawling investigation of disability starts with a powerful reversal. We're so used to seeing disabled people receiving care. But here, Martinez plays Jess, a therapist with cerebral palsy who’s forever looking after people around her, starting with her vulnerable clients.
Bullish alcoholic Aidan (Bryan Dick) doesn’t believe that someone with cerebral palsy could possibly help him, but soon, they build up a witty, teasing rapport. At home, Jess looks after her pregnant lesbian friend Lottie (Crystal Condie), listening as she figures out whether to go back to her partner. But Jess's endless patience is challenged by 21-year-old Poppy (a wonderfully fiery Francesca Mills), who’s fed up with everything disabled people are expected to put up with: especially after her PIP assessment cuts her night-time care, forcing her to go to bed at 9pm in a nappy. Gradually, Poppy chips away at Jess's doormat ways. Why shouldn't disabled people be able to go out partying at night? Why should they have to beg for every crumb of help?
‘All Of Us’ seethes with righteous anger. It’s huge and ambitious, stretching out to encompass many different kinds of disabled experiences. The main thing these people have in common is that they’re all being screwed over by a government that would rather they didn’t exist. It builds to a climactic confrontation with the local Tory MP who’s totally in thrall to the ideology of austerity, wilfully ignoring the fact that benefits cuts end up costing far more than they save.
But it also struggles under the weight of the ideas it’s exploring, growing increasingly disjointed in its second act. There’s a trite bluntness to its efforts to flesh out that Tory MP’s backstory (his fledgling creative efforts were crushed as a child) and it over-explains its characters’ emotional struggles.
Where it shines is in showing how the mundane is massive for disabled people. Poppy and Jess don’t want to spend all their time worrying about what their PIP appeal will say, or when they’ll be able to eat something that isn’t a cold cheese sandwich, dropped off by an over-stretched carer. But they’re robbed of the chance to think about better, more interesting things by a system that rations care to brief, 15-minute windows.
It’s exhilarating to see how much the National Theatre has invested in bringing so many disabled artists to the stage, at a time when their voices are so needed. And even if director Ian Rickson can’t smooth all this play’s jagged edges, it’s a valuable addition to a conversation we need to keep having.