A (Gay Disabled Transexual) Love Story Told to a Ticket Inspector at Alton Towers
An obstacle-littered story of love, with comedy and wheelchairs thrown in
Edinburgh might be one of Europe's most beautiful cities but it's a wholehearted nightmare if you're disabled. Just ask Robert, a young wheelchair-bound Edinburgher with cerebral palsy and one of the main characters in Stephen Keyworth's real-life inspired play A (Gay Disabled Transexual) Love Story Told to a Ticket Inspector at Alton Towers.
In it, Robert and Nathan - a disabled gay couple from Edinburgh - are refused entry to the theme park on safety reasons. Infuriated, they proceed to tell ticket inspector Donna the story of their obstacle-ridden relationship - from their first meeting at the G8 protest in Gleneagles to their accidental encounter with some skinheads in an East London pub.
The Theatre Workshop's 2007 Fringe programme plays host to Degenerate4, Scotland's premier disability festival, and A (Gay Disabled Transexual) Love Story is sure to be one its highlights. Nathan, Robert and Donna's journey is pleasantly entertaining, and they appeal the audience immediately. Moreover, apart from their wheelchairs, they use almost no props but still mange to recreate the many different settings of their story through a series of vivid descriptions and skilful acting.
But above all, A (Gay Disabled Transexual) Love Story is genuinely funny, a mix of juvenile humour, surreal anecdotes and wry insights into the everyday life of a gay disabled man. And while it sometimes threatens to overflow with sentimentality, it pulls just enough punches to avoid becoming too sweet for its own good.