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Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
A NEW show by Mat Fraser, one of the UK's best known disabled
actors, Thalidomide!! A Musical will preview
at the BAC (Battersea Arts Centre) on September
29 and 30, 2005, prior to a national tour that will also include
a second London venue - The Albany Theatre in
Deptford, on November 10, 2005.
The play is set against the backdrop of the Thalidomide drug
scandal of the 1960s and uses a range of musical genres - from
country and western through to ska and traditional musical theatre
- to tell the story of Glyn and Katie.
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In what is described as "a dark
and deeply funny two-handed love story", Thalidomide!!
A Musical is both irreverent and totally un-PC. For Glyn
is "short-armed" (Thalidomide impaired) and hoping to
find true love and respect with "long-armed" Katie,
in what is undoubtedly, a long armed obsessed world.
Songs include: Talk to the Flipper, I Can Be His Arms, Ska'd
for Life and It's Hard to Hitch Down Life's Highway With
No Thumbs.
It will star Anna Winslet and Mat Fraser who, as well as writer
and actor, is also a television presenter, performance poet and
musician. His other work includes, Sealboy Freak which
toured the UK in 2001 and 2002; Everytime You Look at Me (for
BBC2) and Happy Birthday Thalidomide (for Channel 4).
It was in the 1960s that pregnant women were prescribed the drug
Thalidomide to combat morning sickness but with shocking side
effects. Babies born to these women had short flipper-like limbs
(Phocomelia).
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