Review: IT’S A MOTHERF**CKING PLEASURE At Woolly Mammoth

Upon entering the theater for Woolly Mammoth’s production of It’s a Motherf**cking Pleasure, the audience is greeted by the whispers of “This is a safe space.” This is a pretty reassuring statement and one which fits FlawBored’s promise that all performances “will be audio described, relaxed and have captioning available.” FlawBored, which consists of Aarian Mehraban, Samuel Brewer, and Chloe Palmer, delivers on a lot of creative audio descriptions and captioning, but the production itself is anything but relaxed due to it being two-shows in one. The audience’s attention becomes divided between real-life commentary and a fictional play during the show’s 60-minutes of run time. 

It’s a Motherf**cking Pleasure, directed by Josh Roche, goes rapidly back and forth between a play and commentary (as well as a little bit of audience interaction) that addresses ableism, and this makes the fictional play hard to follow. The play-within-a-play itself consists of a thought-provoking premise, and one which has a lot of potential to thrive as a satire. A fictional PR company, Rize, is accused of being ableist, and Helen of HR (played by Chloe Palmer) and public relations officer Tim (played by Samuel Brewer) reach out to a Blind influencer named Ross (played by Aarian Mehraban) to try to fix their company’s PR nightmare. Just as one is getting used to the characters and understanding the story, FlawBored returns to their commentary. 

There are a lot of jokes that rely on closed captions and this ultimately becomes too repetitive. However, one of the better scenes in It’s a Motherf**cking Pleasure, is where the closed captioner and audience interact with each other. It’s an engaging moment, which shows the potential of what It’s a Motherf**cking Pleasure could ultimately be if it stuck with the audience interaction along with witty commentary on ableism. Basically, the more audience interaction, the better! There needs to be more dialogue between FlawBored and the audience, as it benefits everyone to be able to participate in conversations about ableism. 

It’s a Motherf**cking Pleasure should either be a fictional play or a commentary-centric show with audience interaction—it can't be both.  

It’s a Motherf**cking Pleasure runs until March 30, 2025 at Woolly Mammoth. 

Run Time: 60 minutes with no intermission

Top photo caption & credit: L-R: Aarian Mehrabani, Chloe Palmer, Sam Brewer. Sam, who is wearing a business casual outfit, is sitting in a chair. Aarian and Chloe are talking with each other in the background. Credit: Lucas Ibanez-Fæhn