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Loading... A Day in the Death of Joe Eggby Peter Nichols
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. A brilliant play on the difficulties of a marriage when the child is born disabled, in this case, severely disabled. The parents joke and role-play to deal with the pain, but the pain has become the defining feature of their marriage. The crisis comes when the wife brings home two friends from her rehearsal at the local theatre company, and the husband's mother drops by unannounced. The father has dreams of euthanasia, which horrify most of those around him. The ending of the play is poignant, but does leave some room for the theatre-goer to build their own ending, that third act that takes place after you leave the theatre. ( ) Wikipedia: The play centers on a British couple who are struggling to raise their only child, a severely handicapped girl who is incontinent and unable to communicate. Taking care of her has occupied nearly every moment of her parent's lives since her birth, and this has taken a heavy toll on their marriage. Sheila, her mother, still clings to impossible dreams of Josephine's recovery, while her father, Bri, has begun to entertain chilling fantasies of killing Josephine. Joe Egg won the Evening Standard Award for best play (1967) and a Tony Award for best revival (1985). no reviews | add a review
Awards
This brilliantly written, deeply moving play about the problems of a young couple with a spastic daughter-the "Joe Egg" of the title-was described by Ronald Bryden in The Observer (London) as a "remarkable play about a nightmare all women must have dreamed at some time, and most men: living with a child born so hopelessly crippled as to be, as the father in it says brutally, a human parsnip. For all that, it has to be described as a comedy, one of the funniest and most touching I've seen. The bridge between its form and content is a simple but brilliant stroke of theatre. Over the years, the author implies, explaining to others how one lives with such a situation becomes a kind of set party piece. This, savagely exaggerated, is what he has written-a recital, interspersed with jazz, imitations and tap-dances, about life with Joe Egg." No library descriptions found. |
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