This is a local story with a global imprint. It took place only a stone’s throw from the doors of the Cardiff theatre in which it movingly, rip-roaringly plays out, and it might better be called a revolution for how it changed the lives of neurodivergent people around the world.
It is the 1970s and university student Jim Mansell (Peter Mooney) volunteers at Ely hospital in between protesting over South African apartheid and the Vietnam war (“Why do you think you have to save the world?”, asks his girlfriend, Sally). The “patients” are lifetime residents who, under UK law, are placed in care because of their learning disabilities, often institutionalised from birth and, in this case, existing in a hospital that has hit the headlines for alleged abuse.
