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."