It’s a Motherfu**king Pleasure

Play, Performance (2023)
Written and performed by FlawBored, an award-winning, disability led, theater company
Directed by Josh Roche
ArtsEmerson
Emerson Paramount Center
Washington Street, Boston
April 2-13, 2025

Video Designer: Dan Light; Designer: Cara Evans; Lighting Designer: Alex Musgrave; Sound Designer: Calum Perrin

Written and performed by Chloe Palmer, Aarian Mehrabani, Sam Brewer

If there is a plot to this show, it entails the story of a blind fellow who purports to capitalize, as an internet influencer, on the disability issue. That capitalization in itself is offensive, and the performance riffs off the various ways in which this is so by having the other two performers comment on that and, in general, on ableism, which is a stance which demonstrates preferentiality to non-disabled people.

This show is only an hour long and features the three principal actors onstage through much of the performance talking energetically most of the time. As well, there is a running depiction of the script onscreen above the actors for those who are deaf. At least one of the actors is blind and there are others on the team from FlawBored – which conceived the show – who are disabled in one way or another.

Most of the play is intentionally funny, satirical, and spoofs itself as well as spoofing the world of those who try and often fail to honor the disabled. However, in a dramatic departure from the wry, satirical and ironic tone of the show overall, there is, near the end, a cathartic turn, detailed in the spoiler section below.

The wryness which persists through much of the play stimulates a lot of raucous laughter from the audience. I found, however, that the funniest part came when the actors left the stage and the screen on which the script had been displayed took over communications with the audience and asked someone from the audience to read what was there. This riff was written in a particularly hilarious way and there was a dutiful audience member who read the whole thing. The writing and the entire setup were witty and hilarious.

To say that this show breaks the fourth wall is something of an understatement. It breaks it, builds a new one, knocks that one down and keeps on going setting up walls and breaking them down. There is something very wry and dry about the kind of humor employed to this end, reminiscent of that in classic British comedies like Beyond The Fringe or Monty Python. Despite its indulgences – even in the outspokenness of its title, this dry and restrained form of humor lends its tone to the performance overall, which curiously draws out an unbridled hilarity from many of its viewers. Though the performers and the script work hard at energetically throwing over the apple cart of preconceptions and manipulations regarding the disabled, the response of the play is far more Semiotic than Dionysiac. Its way of looking at context and framing of the issue is wry and reflective rather than passionate and angry and seeks to gently nudge attention towards the issues rather than to scream about them, a subtly noble approach which gains some traction in its more successfully witty moments.

– BADMan (aka Charles Munitz)