Unspeakable Conversations
Mick Lally Theatre, Galway
★★★★☆
Can an argument be made for killing babies with disabilities within the first months of their lives? That’s the dramatic, problematic question posed by a discussion at Princeton University in 2002 between the philosopher and author Peter Singer and the attorney and disability-rights activist Harriet McBryde Johnson.
Their debate is the subject of Christian O’Reilly’s new play, Unspeakable Conversations, presented by Once Off Productions and Galway International Arts Festival, and written in collaboration with Liz Carr, Mat Fraser and Olwen Fouéré (who also directs, with Kellie Hughes).
What started as a verbatim treatment of Singer and McBryde Johnson’s tussle becomes more Carr and Fraser’s stories, as the action segues between them and the characters they’re playing, switching from the two actors’ English accents to McBryde Johnson’s smooth southern and Singer’s brash Australian.
Carr, who uses a motorised wheelchair, is best known for her Silent Witness role. Fraser’s credits range from Loudermilk to his play Sealboy: Freak. She has won an Olivier; he has won an award for best male striptease artist. The counterpoint facilitates some mutual slagging. This is a serious topic but their performances bring a lightness of touch and humour that doesn’t undermine.
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An animal-rights proponent, Singer makes the case that parents should have the right to end the lives of newborns with severe disabilities. McBryde Johnson, the “token cripple”, is in the invidious position of justifying her right to be alive. “This is the man who wants me dead.”
Carr wears red stiletto boots; Fraser wears arms to play Singer, despite being neither Australian nor having arms. He discards his “National Theatre arms”, neatly allowing the point about able-bodied actors regularly playing characters with disability, and a bit of crack about how Carr really wanted Hugh Jackman to play Singer.
In a thoughtful and thought-provoking, entertaining, smartly and subtly structured, and provocative show, we learn lots about the actors, and plenty about Johnson and Singer, as well as about assisted dying (Carr calls for assisted living instead) and pondering whether they’d hypothetically take a magic pill to “cure” disability. There’s ballet and dinosaurs, and the audience demurs from joining a song called Put the Crippled Kids Down, Sport.
The meat here is disagreement about quality of life and rights. Is Johnson worse off because she is disabled? Is she less happy or useful? Clearly not. The actors concede that they have profiles, work and love and that others with disability may not have those advantages – an argument for more rights and support, not elimination.
The downside of this is that Singer’s argument is not as well enunciated as Johnson’s. Maybe that’s inevitable given that the source material is Johnson’s 2003 article for the New York Times magazine, also called Unspeakable Conversations, about the Princeton event. There’s no record of Singer’s speech, and though O’Reilly’s programme note says he was supportive and provided correspondence, and Fraser quotes from his writing, there is a sense that his case for killing babies with disabilities is not fully teased out, no matter how unspeakable it is.
Unspeakable Conversations is at the Mick Lally Theatre, as part of Galway International Arts Festival, until Saturday, July 27th
