I think they like us ...
Review: Fittings present Raspberry - based on the life and times of Ian Dury
14 April 2010
Photo of Christine Bruno (Rita) and Jem Dobbs (Dad) during rehearsals. Photo © Tim Morozzo
Colin Cameron caught ‘Raspberry’ at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh on 9 April, 2010 at the start of its UK tour.
As we sat discussing the performance sitting in the Traverse bar last Friday evening my wife Maggie commented that as long as she lives, she will never forget the experience of sitting among what appeared to be a predominantly non-disabled audience with everyone singing along to the rousing, climactic chorus to ‘Cripple’:
Oh I love to be a cripple
Not a Raspberry or Ripple
But a downright dirty cripple
Whenever she sits in meetings with self-important and officious social workers who bleat “But of course we know all about the social model..." Maggie says she will remember that moment with relish. Because they don’t get it. They don’t begin to get it. Nobody gets it like crips get it.
I’d rate Garry Robson’s ‘Raspberry’ as one of the finest pieces of disability arts I’ve seen this century. Certainly in terms of theatre performances I’ve rarely seen anything that matches it. I’d like to describe ‘Raspberry’ as a sort of raucous disability arts parable. Because, like all good parables, meaning can be drawn from it on many different levels.
As soon as you looked at the stage set you knew this was going to be good. The hospital trolley, the anvil, the blackboard, the creepy physiological diagrams, the climbing frame, the montage backdrop, the black and white tiled floor, with the drum kit, the keyboards, the guitars. Much was promised. Slightly freaky, slightly Edward Scissorhands-ish, a little reminiscent of Frankenstein. Very atmospheric.
On comes the blacksmith (Jem Dobbs), wheeling his small, docile, crippled daughter Rita (Christine Bruno) onto the stage on a luggage trolley. He tips her onto the hospital trolley at the front of the stage.
Photo of Christine Bruno (Rita) and Jem Dobbs (Dad) during rehearsals. Photo © Tim Morozzo.
He reaches for the hammer by the anvil at the end of the hospital trolley and begins to hammer at her callipered legs: to re-shape them, to re-shape her, to conform with an image he considers normal. She remains passive, uncomplaining, unchallenging, unresistant.
This is one of Raspberry’s central themes. It is about Rita’s entrapment within her father’s vision. She is flawed, imperfect, wrong, and needs to be corrected. She is subdued by her father’s incessant protestations:
“You will thank me... Can’t you see this is for your own good? You’ve got to remember this is for your own good... You will thank me soon enough...”
While her father’s is the only voice Rita ever hears, she is compliant. How could things be other than as they are? She knows she is deficient because her deficiency has been pointed out over and over again. Impairment is wrong. Normal is right. Normal is good. Impairment is bad. Not-walking is wrong. Walking is good. Just listen to your father. He has your best interests at heart.
They are joined on stage by Ray (Sally Clay, keyboards), Albert (David Stickman Higgins, drums) and Angel (Jamie Duffin, guitars), who together set up a banging and clattering rhythmic beat with sticks and hammers against a variety of surfaces.
The blacksmith plays a mean trumpet solo before the others take up their instruments and we are surrounded by a funky, bluesy, jazzy sound. It was distinctive and original, but with echoes and references to ‘Do It Yourself’ - the second album produced by Ian Dury and the Blockheads. We can hear Dury before we can see him.
The narrative is picked up and carried forward through the song’s lyrics. A sense is conveyed that, while she has accepted and internalised her father’s view, there is something still there, an inner voice perhaps, an aching, longing or a confusion, which tells Rita things are not as they should be, could be different: “He couldn’t see me All he could see was a raspberry”
Photo of Garry Robson as Ian Dury. Photo © Tim Morozzo.
She knows instinctively that being forced to reject her own physicality involves a rejection of self. But she doesn't have the language, the words, the tools, with which to articulate this sense of oppression. Most importantly, perhaps, she does not have the company.
The end of the first song sees the appearance of Spasticus (Garry Robson), wheeling himself to the front of the stage with a series of expletives and Cockney exclamations. This is Robson as Dury, gleefully alarming, rough-edged yet witty and warm and entertaining, mocking and irreverent yet charming. From the Dury-esque get up (bovver boots, two-tone coat, red neckerchief) to the razor blade ear-ring, pencilled sideburns, black eyeliner and skinhead haircut. Robson’s attention to detail is precise.
With his friends, Ray, Albert and Angel, Spasticus begins a process of enlightening Rita as to the true nature of her predicament. This is done with much humour, much of it quite dark humour, lots of swearing, frequent nods to Dury’s lyrics, and excellent music and songs, ranging from the bluesy jazzy, funky, punky stuff to moving ballads.
Spasticus picks up on what is going on here, the relationship between father and daughter, the pressures on Rita to become an imperfect imitation of a non-disabled rather than to be allowed to just get on with being her, and recognises that this is something he has already known:
When I was here before if you fell they’d let you lie
When I was here before, if you fell they’d let you cry... So no one picked you up, if they did you’d never learn
So no one cleaned you up, the stink would make you turn
I thought they were twats
But they thought they were teachers
Using clever ways
To civilize the creatures
Through the ongoing dialogue and action the situations of Rita and her father become clearer. The blacksmith himself had polio as a child, leaving him with a crippled hand. He is obsessed by a conviction that he is personally to blame for his daughter’s impairment. Her mother had found religion and run off to follow a preacher, abandoning them both. The blacksmith is determined he will not turn his back on Rita, but will instead repair her and turn her into ‘his little piece of perfection’. His overbearing oppressive care is explained by his own insecurities.
Spasticus questions Rita as to why her father only ever names her Raspberry. This is a pet name, she explains, a name given to her by her mother, and that her father keeps up out of affectionate remembrance. She is corrected by the Cockney geezer, who informs her that Raspberry is rhyming slang: Raspberry Ripple... Cripple.
Not, as he proceeds to explain, that there is anything wrong with being a cripple. Crippledom is to be owned and celebrated, an identity that, once embraced, sets us free from the oppressive and impossible requirements of normality:
Cripple is good
Cripple is class
You can stick your normal
Up your arse
It is at this point in the performance that the audience is invited to ‘get in touch with your inner cripple’ and join in the chorus. In case anyone feels uncomfortable about this, Spasticus helps by pointing the words out as they are sung, written as they are upon the blackboard:
Oh I love to be a cripple
Not a Raspberry or Ripple
But a downright dirty cripple
This is about ownership of identity. It is about rejecting the intense negativity and patronising judgements that disabled people have heaped upon them on a daily basis from disability industry professionals - teachers, social workers, day centre officers - from molly-coddling carers, from complete strangers and from disembodied others in the media.
It is about self-acceptance as the people we are and refusing to play along with their games. We see Rita tear off her callipers and walk unashamedly with her spastic gait towards the blackboard where she takes a piece of chalk and writes in emphatic letters: RITA “Raspberry!” calls the blacksmith. “Rita. My name is fucking Rita,” comes the reply.
In words reminiscent of Johnny Crescendo’s ‘Disabled people aren’t allowed to say ‘fuck’’, the father misses the point and scolds his daughter. “That’s foul language for a little lady,” he says.
Rita makes a defiant statement of self-affirmation. “I’m not different... I’m just me.” “But you are different... you’re special” comes her father’s response.
The discourse of specialness, of special needs, of heaven’s very special children, is an individualising discourse. It distracts attention away from the structural inequalities and barriers which make the lived experience of impairment in a disabling society the second-class experience it so often is. By the end of the performance Rita has rejected her father’s image of herself and has claimed her own identity as a cripple, or as an impaired person. She is not a flawed normal person: she just is who she is.
This by itself makes ‘Raspberry’ a very powerful piece of music theatre, but there is a great deal more that can drawn from it.
Central is the importance of peer support and collaborative action. This is a journey Rita could never have made by herself. On her own, the only voice she ever heard was her father’s, the voice of a dominant culture which can only recognise impairment as personal tragedy. It needed other disabled people to come into her life with a subversive perspective which says never mind the bollocks, it’s fucking great to be who we are, as we are.
It also worked as a tribute to Ian Dury. For many of us middle-aged crips, before there was disability arts there was Dury. He was a disabled person who didn’t seem to give a toss what other people thought of him.
Even though the majority of his songs weren’t about disability, his lyrics just couldn’t or wouldn’t have been written by a non-disabled. It’s about a way of looking at the world. Like Spasticus and his friends bursting into Rita’s life, having Dury there made it seemed like there was something far better than aspiring to normality and viewing yourself as a ‘failed normal.’
Go and see ‘Raspberry’ for yourself if you get the chance!
Oi! Oi!
For details of the UK tour of Raspberry, go to dao's listings pages
Comments
15 April 2010Liz Porter
When Col and I went to see the recent film about Ian Dury, we both said how much Andy Circus looked like Gary Robson. The film is brilliant, and as I've said before is one of the strongest films about disability that I've ever seen - and a good potrayal of disability by a respectful non-disabled man.
When i heard that Gary had put together 'Raspbery' I thought oh excellent, this will be good!.Pleased to that an established disabled performer who is also a great singer, had had the tennacity to get it together. I respect Gary because he takes see opportunities goes for it and takes risks. Gary challenges persceptions.
From what Colin Cammeron says above, it's certainly a play to watch and one that young people disabled and non-disabled should be encouraged to see too. It sounds as though the play captures so much of that generations expereince of dominnce by people who think they are doing the best for you. It sounds as though Gary has captured Ian Dury and his music too. I can't wait to see it!!!
14 April 2010marian
This sounds amazing!
AND ANOTHER
Garry Robson loves bringing out the raspberry ripple in his audiences
15 April 2010
Garry Robson is Spasticus! Photo © Tim Morozzo
'Spasticus meets Dennis the Menace'
“I love it! That memory will stay with me till the day I die” Thus spake one ecstatic audience member at the Traverse, Edinburgh, last week as a crowd of mainly non-disabled people sang along to ‘I love to be a Cripple, not a Raspberry or a Ripple but a downright dirty Cripple!!’” Marvellous!
Brothers and Sisters it is indeed a wondrous moment when so many take up the opportunity to get a little bit of cripple inside them. My date book has never been so full.
Raspberry’s on the road and causing ripples. A host of reviews from Glasgow and Edinburgh. Looks like everybody loves the songs and the passion of the performances. Whilst the story grabs some - for others it's the same old, same old. Interesting.
When we played it in development at Oran Mor 18 months ago it was described as Agit-Prop and I just said, “no not really, that’s just how it is” and that’s my response now.
People know all the language, the correct way of doing things and think they grasp the philosophical debate. But I’m not sure how many really understand what we’re getting at and that in some ways not a lot has changed.
With my DaDaFest International Artistic Directors hat on, I’m dealing with a major arts Institution at the moment. We’re discussing an event they hosted which I had doubts about.
Every time I raise these doubts I get a check list of procedures they went through to ensure the product ticked all the correct boxes. And I’m saying fine - but I still thought it was crap and then I get another list!
It reminds me of the lyrics from the ‘Hedgehog Song’ by the rather wonderful Incredible String Band - yes I am that old - “Well you know all the words and you sang all the notes, but you never quite learned the song, she said.”
'Twer fab to have sell-out houses at The Tron and The Traverse, and this, and great audience responses, have honed the show and warmed the cockles of a very talented, hardworking and passionate company.
Off to Dundee today - the home of Jute, Jam and Journalism. Maybe Raspberry will get a feature in the Beano.
Spasticus meets Dennis the Menace. Now I’d buy a copy of that!
As us old turns say “See you on the Ice”
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