Going On the Offensive Calling a Show Thalidomide! A Musical Is Asking for Trouble - and That's What It's Got. By Neil Cooper

Summary

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MAT Fraser is sick. At least, Councillor Malcolm Gwinnett, a LibDem member for Wolverhampton, seems to think so anyway. His sentiments towards this most singular of writer/performers aren't caused by philanthropic concern, however. Rather, in a throwback to those long-gone days of Mary Whitehouse's moral majority and, indeed, more recent civic challenges to Jerry Springer - The Opera and Behzti, a play that was withdrawn after a near riot outside the theatre it was in, the good burgher of the Midlands is incensed and offended by the content of Fraser's new play.

Granted, any work mischievous enough to brave the title, Thalidomide! A Musical, is asking for trouble. And, in truth, Fraser was up for badness from the start.

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Going On the Offensive Calling a Show Thalidomide! A Musical Is Asking for Trouble - and That's What It's Got. By Neil Cooper

Judging by his naughty schoolboy ebullience, you suspect, too, that, however objectionable the local member's sentiments may be when he recently asked: "Have we really nothing better to portray than a pharmaceutical company making a dreadful mistake?", Fraser would happily have given him a hearty pat on t...

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