Dan Daw is gay and suffers (although he would not call it that) from cerebral palsy. He glories in calling himself a ‘queer crip’. Fair enough. In last year’s Festival offering, The Dan Daw Show, he offered us a glance into his relationship with a non-disabled partner. This year he took us through his childhood in Australia and the experiences that have made him the person he is.
Daw is clearly a pioneering performer, but as an able-bodied and non-judgemental viewer I find his shows hard to connect with. He's understandably big among the disabled community and currently he clearly ticks all the boxes in what seems, this year in Edinburgh, to be a massive exercise in identity entertainment. Had a hard time? Life let you down? Surprised by the demands of motherhood? Want to dramatise your ADHD diagnosis? This is your moment – tell us all about it!
Preaching to the converted is easy. But Daw should be more than that. He’s done good work with other companies (the excellent Candoco, for example) but in these outings it’s been all about him and all inward looking. He starts from the combative position of the victim, assuming that many of us will be shocked or offended. But is that true? In Exxy’s curtain speech he issued his own trigger warnings, explaining how sound and lighting might affect those experiencing sensory over-stimulation and sympathising with anyone overwhelmed by what they were about to see. But my problem with Daw’s shows is not because I’m embarrassed by his movement or his speech and I’m not in need of the quiet room in which to recover. It’s simply that the shows are so dull.
This time he talked about his childhood and his relationship with his Nan, clearly a major and admirable factor in his acceptance of what life had handed him. The set was the back garden, with chairs and a vague view of the outback. ‘Exxy’, by the way, is Aussie slang for ‘expensive’, although that wasn’t clear, unless it referred to the cost of the sixteen people credited in the programme.
Daw introduced his three friends, all – as they saw it – set apart from society in some way: Sofia had a shaky arm and told us how she’d come to notice it. Joe confessed to explaining his wonky walking as ‘sports injury’, while Tiiu was angry about corrective surgery. They walked about. Towards the end they ran on the spot for several minutes. Shouts of ‘Come on!’ resounded and the house lights went up, encouraging the audience to join in. Cue much whooping.
I declined the open invitation to the after-party (‘joyful and inclusive’). I hope they all had a great time. But the conversation among paying punters on the bus home mostly wondered quite what it had all been about and why that show was scheduled in a major international Festival whose tag line had said ‘Dance that will leave you reeling’. No, it didn’t. And it wasn’t dance.
