UK Disabled Actor Rivets Off-Off-Broadway Audience
By Barbara Duncan (bjdnycla@aol.com)
 Actor Mat Fraser, one of the UK's most prominent 'thalidomide babies,' is starring this February in "The Flid Show," an off-off-Broadway production about the impact of the drug which caused physical disabilities in an estimated 10,000 babies throughout Europe and Canada. "Flid" is a British playground taunt based on
"flippers" and thalidomide, and the play title appears to reflect the caustic humor of the main character, Duncan Mowbray, and his ambivalence about his disability identity.
Written by Canadian playwright Richard Willett, the drama provides a historical reckoning with all who played a part in the drama surrounding this drug: the drug companies that did insufficient testing and fought its withdrawal from the market in Germany, the UK and other European countries; Duncan's mother, representing the tens of thousands of pregnant women who innocently took the drug in the late 1950s and early 1960s to avert nausea or sleeplessness; and the governments whose business-friendly regulations made it difficult to inform the public about the newly-discovered side-effects.
Willett has done copious research into both the medical and popular literature surrounding the drug, making possible fascinating vignettes such as Dr. Frances Kelsey, the young, female pharmacologist of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, who single-handedly blocked thalidomide from the American market; the well-publicized trials of a Belgian mother who killed her infant daughter who was born without arms; and the media circus that followed an American television actress who took the tablets just after their effects became known and flew to Sweden for a legal abortion.
The script is balanced between scenes of Duncan's present life as a mildly successful lounge singer surrounded by strong women - his sister and his girlfriend - who both demand an emotional maturity he is not quite ready to take on, and forays into the past, populated by ghosts - his late mother, an unhappy artist who committed suicide, his father who left the family, and schoolyard bullies. At times the play is weighted down by all the burdens of the past and expositions of scientific data, but is then suddenly leavened by the raw sexuality and quirkiness of the contemporary scenes - in his nightclub act Duncan only sings songs that were hits in 1962, the year of his birth.
Fraser is a potent actor; in fact the New York Times reviewer, Charles Isherwood, calls him "charismatic" (February 1, 2005), and the uneven play demands such a force to keep it aloft. Fraser's deft delivery of both the dialogue and easy-listening rock in resonant voice, coupled with his muscular interpretation of the character, kept the audience riveted. The ensemble of supporting characters are also strong, illuminating many aspects of the story that the playwright refuses to cast in the simple black and white judgments of hindsight. "The Flid Show," will continue throughout February at the tiny (barely accessible--the elevator works but it's narrow, and the restroom is up 2 steps) Medicine Show Theatre, on a third floor, way west of the theater district. If you miss Mat Fraser in this New York show, you can catch him in March in Auckland where he will present his one-man show as part of Giant Leap, New Zealand's international disability arts festival, taking place in Auckland, February 26- March 6: www.giantleap.org
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