Perfect Show for Rachel presents a joyful world of possibility for disabled people

Perfect Show for Rachel is not supposed to make audiences comfortable. The cast warns you that from the start. It’s not the perfect show for me or you. It’s the perfect show for Rachel O’Mahony, a 35-year-old woman with a learning disability who takes charge of the production. She makes the decisions here.

There might be moments of awkward silence as Rachel plots her next move. There might be repeats of a scene that Rachel wants perfected that night. It isn’t designed with audience ease in mind, but so much of the world beyond the stage of this show is not designed with Rachel’s ease in mind.

It just so happens that Rachel’s show turns out to be pretty wonderful for the audience too. Together with her younger sister Flo, the artistic director behind Perfect Show for Rachel, and a large cast of performers, Rachel creates a joyous spectacle.

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A good chunk of it is improvisation. There is the occasional fart joke (or regular, depending on Rachel’s mood that night). There are big musical numbers (Kylie is the favourite). Rachel and Flo’s mother stars in a Dirty Dancing rendition which, of course, includes the lift. Home movies are projected onto the walls.

But exactly what the show looks like changes night to night, according to what Rachel decides should happen. She uses robotic buttons to direct the performers into their positions, instructing them to carry out planned or unplanned routines. If it sounds bonkers and chaotic, that’s because it is, but it’s got bundles of charm.

“I have grown up my whole life with Rachel as my big sister,” Flo tells the Big Issue. “She’s learning disabled and lives in a care home. That’s the best way I can frame her disability. I’ve grown up with that relationship being profoundly related to who I am and how I see the world. And Rachel’s whole life has been informed by the fact that she’s learning disabled.”

Flo set up a theatre company when she was around 19, “like a cocky little shit”, she recalls with laughter. It was trickier than she thought it would be.

She remembers having a “depressing and deeply necessary” lunch with her mentor Lee Simpson, the actor and comedian best known for being part of the Comedy Store Players improvisation group. It was the third week of the Edinburgh Fringe and she had no money left in her bank account when she told him she wanted to include Rachel in her theatre.

“I didn’t necessarily want to make a show that was about my experience of growing up with Rachel. I think lots of shows have spoken to that experience. I had this unique alchemy of a sister who loves being in the theatre. I had a theatre company,” Flo says.

“I had some access awareness. We had already started looking at relaxed as the standard model for our audiences. I had this idea of making a show about Rachel and in relationship with her.”

Simpson came on board with his production company Improbable, but it took years to develop what is now the award-winning Perfect Show For Rachel, currently touring the UK.

There were ethical considerations, of course. “Is it OK to make a show with someone who can’t understand a contract?” Flo asked. “We pay Rachel and have to navigate her benefits system and all of that is a lot, but of course she should be paid for the work.”

It became clear through this process that Rachel should steal Flo’s job as director, meaning that she could be in charge and comfortable within the process. They developed technology, like Rachel’s buttons, to give her control over what was happening on stage. 

“It turned into a much bigger thing. I have to justify that decision every time we ask the Arts Council for yet more money. But there’s something in the investment into this like quite an inconvenient show. It’s beautiful, but it’s inconvenient,” Flo says.

“You can’t pretend it’s not happening. It’s not in the side room of a venue. It will take up space. There will be 20 of us on tour. My mum’s in it. There’s a live scribe who types up her words because she talks all the way through the show. We treat them like poetry.”

The pandemic‘s arrival during the planning process made the show feel more important. Care homes were obliterated by lockdown legislations, Flo says, and people with learning disabilities were treated the same way as elderly people. Rachel wasn’t allowed out of her care home, despite not being any more vulnerable than her younger sister.

Flo wanted her sister to “land right back into the middle of civic life” after that.

“It felt important to make it big. We’ve worked with West End musical directors. If we’re going to do the Dirty Dancing dance, there better be the lift. If we’re going to have a live musician, it better be someone really fucking amazing,” Flo says.

“It’s also incredibly hard to do because it costs so much to tour. But I think the venues that we go to now are the ones who went: ‘It’s worth this being inconvenient. We want the legacy and impact of the show to live in the walls of the building beyond it.’”

Flo never wanted to judge the show based on how much Rachel changed. They worked from the basis that Rachel is perfect exactly as she is, even when her instincts look different to other people’s (Rachel loves a fart joke while Flo hates them, for example).

“When you’re a sibling and growing up in the 90s around disability, you get so much information about how you’re this weird angelic presence because you dare to live nearby disability,” Flo says. “Slowly, that erodes your sense of trust that Rachel might be wise or sharp or creative in a way that’s not knowable to me. It was very helpful to go: ‘Rachel’s perfect and incredibly wise and I’m just too stupid to understand that yet.’

“I found out that she was a great dramaturg, that she could hold her nerve and hold audiences in really high-octane stuff when I would have pressed a cheesy, sad song 20 minutes before she did. I’d have lost my nerve. She could bring the house down and I couldn’t. She’s actually good. Sometimes I disagree with choices, but I’ve learnt to just go: ‘That’s perfect too.’”

Although they never set out to monitor how much Rachel had changed through the show, Flo says it has been “radical”. She “relaxed into being who she is” while also glowing in a confidence that she had never had before.

“Rachel’s language and vocabulary has expanded by tenfold. She makes decisions about her life, whereas before she was a bit of a bystander in her life,” Flo says. 

“I think for people who have learning disabled family members who see the show, it brings up a bit of grief that life isn’t always this. That’s even true in Rachel’s life now. That grief is worth feeling because we know the world around learning disabled folks isn’t what the show is. Learning disabled folks know that better than anyone. It presents this contrasting possibility.”

In that, Perfect Show for Rachel is quietly radical and quietly political.

“I had this stupid idea that the show had to be seriously political about how fucked up the government have been with learning disabled folks,” Flo admits. “I really did feel all of those things going into it. And then Rachel made a show that was more and more joyful and silly and playful. It’s a really good night out.

“I thought: ‘Shouldn’t it be more angry?’ But I think all of the politics sits in the belly of it. There needs to be work documenting, sharing and making really clear how we’re harming disabled people, but there also needs to be a space to say: ‘This is what we are missing out on if we don’t get our shit together and stop doing this repression of disabled people and awful under-resourcing of disabled people.’”

Rachel proves that people with learning disabilities can thrive when they are given the opportunity to thrive – with all the access requirements designed to make it comfortable for them. It might be inconvenient for us, but the rest of life is inconvenient for disabled people. And we might well be missing out on a whole lot of joy if we continue excluding people like Rachel from having their chance to shine.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. 

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