Review: If These Spasms Could Speak

Robert Softley Gale writes, directs and performs plays. He also has Cerebral Palsy.

Put the two together and the result is titled If These Spasms Could Speak– a piece created after he asked other disabled people, some with other disabilities, how their disabilities, and their bodies, made them think about themselves. In parts, Gale includes his own personal memories, experiences and feelings.

The set for this one-man show is simple- a sofa and a stage. However, Gale uses up a fair amount of physical energy as he plays several different characters, requiring him to move around on stage often, and quite fast. Some of these ‘characters’ are shown in photos displayed on a white board behind him, making it clear that they are all real people.

Disability is the main theme of this show and that can never be forgotten, or ignored. As a person who shares Gale’s disability, I fully related to his horror when he described the time an insensitive doctor asked him if he could do buttons and shoelaces- very difficult tasks for most with CP. He also related his dislike for having students observing his medical appointments- another thing I’ve always shared!

However, as a disabled adult, I was very pleased, if slightly surprised, to find that sex, dating and relationships were also major themes of the piece. These are not themes, sadly, that many non-disabled people expect us to know anything about- but this is a myth!

The experiences described on this theme were ‘normal’ ones. Some first dates, including Gale’s own. He describes in humorous detail how he ate spaghetti- a ‘universal first date no-no’ which, to his great surprise, made his partner respect him more for having guts!

Some of the characters describe sexual experiences. The ways in which disability made these challenging are related with great humour that can be easily understood by anyone- disabled or otherwise.

Two particularly funny stories from other characters stick in my mind- the woman with restricted growth who went to a party wearing a revealing top, thinking that because she was disabled, everyone would be too busy looking at her wheelchair to notice. She was wrong- men were too busy looking at her chest to notice her wheelchair!

The other was from a disabled parent who had a non-disabled child and lived a very short distance from her primary school. However the girl was ‘crap at getting up in the morning’ and would use the support her mother needed as an excuse for her lateness, even though this was not the truth! This, I found myself thinking, is an excuse any non-disabled child would love to have available to them.

The show has a fitting soundtrack- a song called Skinny Legs and Take My Breath Away, which was, apparently, playing on the radio as Gale visited his brother in hospital after a severe asthma attack. That was one of the rare moments at which I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry!

Another theme was how the characters’ thoughts changed over time. They all clearly accepted their disabilities and limitations more as they got older- something which I personally could relate to.

The show ends with a long, jumbled list of words on the white board, all of which the characters have used to describe themselves to Gale while he was interviewing them. The list, fittingly, ends with ‘okay’ which, at the end of it all, was the point of the piece- to show us that although disability brings with it sadness, pain and embarrassment, disabled people really are okay.