Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Mandy Redvers-Rowe, Rachael Townsend.

Music: Craig Gamble.

Writing is often viewed as glamourous, seductive, an enticing call to a place which calls for awards and the possibility of being able to change people’s minds with a series of taps on a keyboard or a deliberated word which strikes the right note. The art of writing the meaningful prose has brought down governments, brought conflict and peace to lands and made a lover’s heart soar; and yet there are those who believe it is the easiest occupation in the world, for they don’t see the agony, the self-doubt, the moments where the words don’t arise and the long labouring battle that arrives unseen as writer’s block sinks the author of sentences into the abyss.

How does a writer feel as though they are Measuring Up to the taunting screen or blank paper, especially when the world makes sure that they also have a disability to contend with, to be blind and not be able to see the words appear in screen, to visualise what you want to say, but not to be able to read those same criticism of humanity, or the love of a single person, that is the true irony of the writer who suffers.

Couple that with the debilitating fear of sitting in front of a blank page for days, weeks, years on end without being able to scratch the surface and then you can understand, feel completely, the sorrow, and ravenous joy felt by Mandy Redvers-Rowe as she pours her soul out in her autobiographical tale, Measuring Up.

Aided by Rachael Townsend and musician Craig Gamble, Ms. Redvers-Rowe shows the reason of theatre off with excellent timing, both the tragic and the comedic figure can be viewed but it is one that strangely does not dwell upon the anguish of other’s pity for her plight, or her disability, instead it rages with a perfect beat of security and the punch line of damning the government and quite often other’s associations, for taking away the right to write, to be seen as independent, productive members of society, indeed to be a star. This at a time when disability hate crime has sharply increased is not lost upon the audience who lapped up the humour and the laments with equal passion.

An immersive, tactile and in truth hard hitting play, brutal perhaps in its honesty but never short of giving the audience the gift of laughter, Measuring Up certainly does lift the heart aloft.

Ian D. Hall