Hargrave's book examines the field of theatrical practices involving actors with learning disabilities, which in the author's eyes is greatly ‘under-theorised’ (p. xi). Hargrave's aim is to establish a theoretical approach that goes beyond therapeutic or social frameworks and instead conceives of this type of work as a professional art practice. The author's argumentation is not quite as innovative as it seems considering the noticeable increase in interest in the professionalism of theatres of learning disabilities since Theatre HORA's and Jérôme Bels's Disabled Theater (2012), which proved very influential in the German-speaking discourse, shifting the way we see theatre with learning-disabled actors away from mere therapy. However, Hargrave's exclusive focus on the aesthetics of theatres of learning disability is still exceptional in the emerging specialist field of disability and performance, which started with pioneer works such as Petra Kuppers's Disability and Contemporary Performance (2003) or Carrie Sandahl and Philip Auslander's Bodies in Commotion (2005) and has since broadened into a thematically and geographically diverse research area with recent publications such as Kuppers's Disability Culture and Community Performance (2011), Kirsty Johnston's Stage Turns (2012), Bree Hadley's Disability, Public Space Performance, and Spectatorship (2014) and Yvonne Schmidt's Ausweitung der Spielzone (2016). The specific focus on theatre works with and by actors with learning disabilities – such as Back to Back's Small Metal Objects (2005); Dark Horse Theatre's Hypothermia (2010); and Pinocchio (2007) by York Theatre Royal, The Shysters and Full Body & The Voice – is what sets Hargrave's monograph apart from previous publications and allows him to challenge long-standing exclusionary assumptions about what constitutes professional theatrical practice.

Hargrave's book is divided into two parts. Part I examines how the performance and theatre scene by actors with learning disabilities are discussed in the present. Hargrave gives a historical overview of the terminology surrounding learning disability, explaining the background of the disability arts movements and outlining the development of disability studies as a discipline. Furthermore, he gives in-depth analyses of Small Metal Objects and Hypothermia, interrogating their structures, quality and aesthetics. It is here that Hargrave makes an important point about the ways in which societal norms influence an audience's reception of a piece with learning-disabled actors. He convincingly argues that societies continue to reinforce binary oppositions between art practices involving people with learning disabilities and art practices by people without. Devoting an entire book to theatre by people with learning disabilities could also be seen as a part of the marginalizing discourse but the fact that Hargrave reveals the binaries prompts the reader to be more reflective about the construction of social norms. The author concludes that insomuch as the impairments of disabled artists are formed by different and complex social processes, they ‘risk becoming the subject of disavowal … precisely by the actions of those who claim to speak on their behalf’ (pp. 45–6). Based on this assertion Hargrave adds that if learning disabilities are social and ideological constructs, they must be considered ‘unstable’ (p. 44) rather than as fixed categories.

Part II includes two chapters and engages critically with the work of UK-based company Mind the Gap. Hargrave analyses two national touring productions of the company, On the Verge (2005) and Boo (2009), both of which raise questions about authorship, professionalism, authenticity and aesthetic values. He shows that the audience reception of an artwork with learning-disabled artists, which oscillates between seeing the performer as a disabled person and seeing him/her as an actor playing a role, ‘points to how “cultural values are inscribed in our acting conventions”’ (p. 199). The author concludes by arguing that society needs to accept a new poetics of theatre by actors with learning disabilities, ‘one that treats disabled identity as a more complex creative construction and privileges the appraisal of artworks as work’ (pp. 227–8; original emphasis) rather than as a social and therapeutic activity to integrate learning-disabled performers into society.