Sweet, funny, and irreverent, Martha conquers the hearts of the public. Martha is a musical play about the marginalisation and repression of deaf people and the use of the sign language that mixes historical episodes with a future dystopia.

The play starts in a retro-looking cabaret club from an undefined era which echoes Berlin during the Weimer Republic as well as Chicago in the prohibitionist era. It’s a clandestine burlesque club where deaf and British Sign Language (BSL) users perform. It is their work, their refuge, their home. In this, it reminded me of Edouard Molinaro’s beautiful and sensitive La Cage Aux Folle.   

Martha is set in dystopian Britain 2055, where sign language is forbidden and deaf children are put through the ‘programme’, which forces different types of therapy in the hope of getting deaf people to speak. Sarah, played by Cherie Gordon, becomes part of the club ‘family’ by claiming to be a deaf person being pursued by the government. In reality, she is a secret agent whose mission is to identify the club and prosecute the people running it.

Sarah’s story of reconciliation with her deaf identity is interspersed with the burlesque acts of the club’s artists. They recount historical deaf figures, such as Princess Alice of Battenburg who sheltered Jews during WWII and Kitty O’Neil who was the stuntwoman for Wonder Woman and speed record breaker. 

The title Martha comes from Martha’s Vineyard, an island off the shore of Cape Cod in the US, which had a higher than usual deaf population and where the deaf and hearing inhabitants used sign language. Martha’s strong message is that of BSL as language, not just a means of access. 

Although the play begins with meta-theatre, by interacting with the audience and with Sarah as a member of the audience, this is lost as soon as Sarah joins the community. The ensemble does a good job at conveying BSL as language and the deaf community as a home, often a refuge from hearing people’s lack of understanding, from condescension, and from repression. 

For a play that deals with harrowing themes of child abduction, forced therapy, torture and killing, Martha is a little tame. The fun duo Duffy and Eben James are remarkable in their clowning abilities, a la Philippe Gaulier. The fun is not countered sufficiently by tragedy. The elements are there, however, and the public shares in Martha’s call for recognition of the full dignity of sign language and of deaf people.

Martha plays until the 21st of June at the Sherman Theatre, Cardiff (see details), then on the 25th and 26th of June at Pontio, Bangor (see details).