Peter Nichols

Joe Egg Peter Nichols

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."