Listening to Lady Gaga, Poker Face before the curtain went up, I was not sure what to expect. The verdict: A great compact production with just two actors performing in the first person, and as true friends, for their research Rachael and Lisa went onto the streets with a recorder to ask what their new performance should be about before devising the show. What happens is a wonderful feeling of the ‘here and now’ through using this research as living, edible source material.

The start of the play is armed with that precise tension realised through extremely funny impersonations of the public’s various voices in different London accents that we are all so familiar which will get you in stitches “ yeah, whatever “ . A wonderfully rude, candid, ‘in yer face’ hour and twenty minutes which builds to become a clear on stage presence between the two women, their friendship and an intelligent insight into our perceptions of disability and what is ‘normal’…

Simple yet engaging and innovative visual set design incorporates the use of self-portraiture, projected text and screens that provide a compelling backdrop for the whole interplay. The journey becomes increasingly chaotic where it seems the influence or taking on board of the public’s ideas reveals an unworkable, yet funny and objectionable view of what we can perceive to be normal and how to approach it. It ends with a fantastic twist that defines it’s success. That to ‘not care, for it to wash over you’, a repeated motif during the play is infinitely preferable to being patronised! Thrilling stuff! Thankyou.