This piece originally appeared in The Demon newspaper.
On Sunday the 17th Francesca Martinez brought her show WTF Is Normal?! to Just the Tonic Leicester and sought to answer the question posed by the title of her show. As Martinez has Cerebral Palsy she has regularly been labelled “abnormal” and in this show she attempts to seek out the elusive “normal people” of the world, seemingly there are none as Francesca explains with observations which are highly amusing but which also ring true. She is a unique comedic voice on issues of disabilism and politics in general, the audience left amused but also with their views challenged.
Francesca takes us through her life in this one hour show; she talks about her experiences at school, her time on the TV show Grange Hill and her relationships. Throughout she jokes about the way her perception of herself and the world changed, which partly involved a man from the front row being asked to read a love poem to her, and, in and amongst the laughs, she also addresses the audience’s perceptions. Humour, it seems, is the way to a person’s brain.
Francesca was so engaging and funny that she retained my full attention and focus for the whole hour despite my distractingly full bladder. If that is not a sign of an excellent comedian, I don’t know what is. She also told the audience that she’s not allowed on panel shows because the TV people say that she’s too scary, they don’t know what they’re missing.