Tom Wentworth’s Real Deal reviewed

Liz Carr as Meg in The Real Deal by Tom Wentworth. Photo by Anna Lenihan

I don’t know if you saw the Crip Tales series on BBC? or BBC America?

I thoroughly recommend them!

They are a series of 6 monologues written by writers with disabilities, performed by actors with disabilities about people with disabilities.

And obviously you can still find them on BBC iplayer

I think they are ground breaking, entertaining, thought-provoking, mind-changing and at times laugh-out-loud funny

My favourite is Tom Wentworth’s Real Deal

As I have already published his play Windy Old Fossils and am publishing his Burke and Hare play soon – I acknowledge I may not be totally impartial!

But here is a wonderful review by someone who doesn’t know Tom at all – that agrees with me. But it is not a competition – every monologue is worth watching – and you may well be tempted to do just that after reading this review from Disability Arts Online

I think this is a breakthrough not only in how the disabled are allowed to be portrayed on mainstream TV, but I am hoping there will be a trickle-down or maybe I should say trickle-sideways effect to all so-called minority groups and how everyone is portrayed, written about, allowed to write about etc. But I guess ratings are king – so thats another good reason for watching them – to be sure programmes that don’t fit the mainstream mould are commissioned more

Well done Mat Fraser for getting the idea off the ground!

Nadia x