´óÏó´«Ã½

Thalidomide!! A Musical offers the punk poet, performer, presenter and Ouch writer's take on being born a 'Flid', in an all-tap-dancing, all-singing, non-PC show which makes Jerry Springer: The Opera look tame.

Having never professionally tapped or salsa'd before, Mat is somewhat exhausted when we talk after the show's preview at Battersea Arts Centre. "I'm absolutely shattered - it's been me and Bill [Banks-Jones, the director] constantly rewriting the show for two weeks at BAC, then me trying desperately to learn all the dance moves during 12-hour days," he says.

Nevertheless, both nights at the south London venue have sold out ahead of the show's regional tour, and most of the audience do not even seem to be the regular disability arts crowd. Fraser puts this down in part to the production's intriguing title. "I bandied the idea for the title around for a while, and it always got a laugh," he admits. "I think it's the promise of a PC-free comedy about disability - something from the same camp as Springtime for Hitler, which people like - where you wouldn't think the subject would lend itself to musical theatre."

The show tells the story of how the drug Thalidomide was developed by Nazi doctor Dr Heinrich Mückter and, despite it causing deformities in hundreds of babies, how the drug companies who profited from it tried to evade responsibility for the results. But it is also a love story between Mat's Glyn, a short-armed boy struggling with the schoolyard bullies, and Katie (Anna Winslet), the daughter of a scientist who falls in love with the idea of 'helping' him. It is not until years later, when Glyn realises that it is not just pity she feels for him, that their love can blossom.

"I think all good musicals are about a love story, and the world you're writing about is a backdrop to that," says Mat. "Teaching people about Thalidomide was a secondary aim - the main aim was to tell a human story which was touching and hideously grotesque, to get people laughing at the same time as getting them moved by the content. I did scratch performances of the show at BAC last year, and a lot of the feedback I got afterwards was that people were most interested in the relationship between Glyn and Katie, so I have taken that to heart in this version."

The musical's songs - which go by such memorable titles as: Talk to the Flipper, I Can Be His Arms, Ska'd for Life, and It's Hard to Hitch Down Life's Highway With No Thumbs - are about anger, alienation, insecurity and bitterness. But they send up the pathos of the characters' situations mercilessly. Visually, too, the production is challenging, with Mat playing long-armed characters by holding broom handles glued to gloves, and shaking them jazz-hands style for the dance numbers.

"I knew I had to play lots of long-armed characters, but we didn't have a big budget," he explains. "So I thought, let's make them look false, let's go: 'Oh no, another pair of fake arms that look ridiculous!' I always liked The Muppets, the way you could see the sticks at the bottom of their arms. And all my life I've been a victim of people's ideas about short arms, so I wanted to control the humour about them myself."

The reaction of non-disabled audience members is intriguing; initially shocked by the way the production revels in the grotesque and freakish, they quickly begin to relax into its dark humour. For disabled audiences, it's likely to be quite a refreshing departure from the portrayals of disability they have seen before. "I wasn't consciously trying to say: 'Hey guys, let's move things forward', but I wasn't interested in walking paths which have been worn to the dry mud," Mat explains. "I want to see new territories used to explore disability - violence, aggression, speed ... and musicals!"

Coming from a theatrical family (his parents were both actors), the latter was perhaps inevitable. Once Mat's Dad came out as gay and moved in with the head of a musical theatre department at a performing arts college, there was no getting away from it. "Every Sunday morning was full of 'laaaah!' and people singing," he recalls. "But I never thought I'd be able to tread the boards myself. The West End and Broadway just do not have disabled people hobbling around or flipping their flippers on stage."

After a 16-year career as a drummer, however, Mat discovered a burning desire to get his voice heard. "The first thing I saw was , who was like the Bob Dylan of the disability world. Trouble is: I'm a punk, I hate folk music - to me it's mum's and dad's music. So rap was the obvious place to go. I know it's weird, a middle class, short-armed, white guy doing rap, but hey."

Some of the lyrics in are reminiscent of the kind of rap-poetry Mat wrote back in the '80s and '90s. This time round, however, he is also enjoying playing with the conventions of the musical theatre world in which he grew up. "It's both a subversion of that whole tradition, and an homage," he admits. "I do love musical theatre, but I do hate the fact there is still cultural apartheid in it. And rather than wait around 'til I'm 65 for some crap part to finally come my way, I thought: 'why not write my own?'"