Review: It's A Motherf**king Pleasure

How do you review a show that’s critic-proof? That’s the challenge put forth by Samuel Brewer, Aarian Mehrabani and Chloe Palmer, the trio behind this barbed satire. If critics (and audience members) don’t leave “the disability show” with glowing reviews, they’re a “bunch of ableist c*nts”, we’re told.

This isn’t the only time ableist anxieties are weaponised in this bracing (and often bracingly funny) show. We’re put off balance with an introduction that’s purportedly designed to make anyone in the audience with a disability feel more comfortable, although the accommodating soon reaches levels of the absurd as the cast scream their lines for the hard of hearing, earplugs are handed out for those sensitive to these screams and the lights are continually raised and dimmed to oblige different levels of sight impairment.

Sandwiched between this meta-tomfoolery is a more traditional play, which involves an unscrupulous PR agency’s plans to manipulate a blind influencer into making his condition look aspirational. Before you know it, they’re monetising the blind experience by encouraging people with 20-20 vision to test drive a cane, go on literal blind dates, or truly taste their meal by eating in a pitch-dark restaurant.

Comedy poking fun at identity politics and virtue signalling tends to be the realm of right-wing comedians, but this trio aren’t likely to appear on GB News anytime soon. Their pin-sharp show is overflowing with dark humour and righteous anger, but there’s no finger-waving. The perfect ally doesn’t exist – we’re all failing terribly, but acknowledging that is half the battle.