‘Raspberry’ is a plea for people not have to fit other people’s ideas of perfection. So let’s celebrate the sometimes bamboozling eccentricity of Gary Robson’s mini-musical – which at least practises what it preaches. It’s a show with one foot firmly in the past, both in its homage to 1970s punk-poet Ian Dury, and in its agitprop-style assertion of disability rights. Its story is rudimentary, but it has sass and some fine live music.
On Keith McIntyre’s two-tone set, we encounter Rita – known as ‘Raspberry’ to her dad, a psychotic handyman bent on fixing her disability with a hammer, so she can be his ‘little piece of perfecthood’. Fortunately for Rita, a dream team of disabled guardian angels arrive in the form of Spasticus Autisticus (Dury, by another name lifted from one of his songs), a female Ray Charles and – inexplicably – Albert Einstein.
There’s nothing surprising about the message of empowerment Spasticus brings, but Robson’s performance as the mouthy cockney has charisma to spare. The show, directed by Gordon Dougall, is best considered as a jazz-funk gig, which includes (scarily) an audience participation number reclaiming the word ‘cripple’. Ian Dury might bridle at the corniness, but the swagger and the big heart would be right up his street.