Makes You Laugh, Makes You Think: A Day In The Death Of Joe Egg At Trafalgar Studios

A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, Trafalgar Studios ★★★★★

By Johnny Fox Last edited 53 months ago

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Makes You Laugh, Makes You Think: A Day In The Death Of Joe Egg At Trafalgar Studios A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, Trafalgar Studios 5
Photo: Marc Brenner

Peter Nichols wrote A Day in the Death of Joe Egg in 1967, partly to exorcise his feelings at having a disabled child.

In those days, boys called each other ‘spastic’ at school, in ways that some later substituted ‘gay’, and the charity Scope which focuses on cerebral palsy only changed its name from ‘The Spastics Society’ in 1994.

Photo: Marc Brenner

But it still caused a gasp in Simon Evans’ excellently paced and detailed production at Trafalgar Studios.

Joe, the disabled child who’s the focus but not the principal character, is daughter of sink school teacher Bri and his affectionate wife. Storme Toolis, as the first disabled actor to take the role in a major production, varies stillness and tremor, silence and articulation with panache.

Photo: Marc Brenner

What’s at stake are the parents’ different coping mechanisms: Claire Skinner’s Sheila takes pride in her nurturing homemaking and seeks refuge in amateur dramatics, while Toby Stephens’ outstandingly sardonic Bri staves off despair with dark humour and harmless fantasies mostly about sex with his wife.

All good domestic banter needs a convincing audience of innocent bystanders — a pattern repeated in Abigail’s Party a decade later. Joe Egg is well served by the second act intervention of two friends from Sheila’s am dram group, effortlessly well done by Clarence Smith as the bombastic do-gooder we’d all cross the pub to avoid, and Lucy Eaton as the polite audience’s suppressed inner voice allowed to express revulsion at coming so close to disability.

Photo: Marc Brenner

Her treatise on euthanasia must have been hard for Nichols to write, but is hilarious when delivered so well. In her rejection of anything ‘not physically attractive’ she’s a prototype for the WAG generation.

Although Sheila claims to have picked the items up at charity sales, the set is perhaps a little too upper middle for the period and Bri’s teacher’s salary, so it’s a surprise and delight to see Patricia Hodge bring him down a peg or two in her terrific cameo as his soundly Bristolian working class mother.

Photo: Marc Brenner

Ensemble acting of this quality is rare enough at any time, but it’s the best cast you’ll currently see in a comedy in the West End, and may make you wonder what all the noise and capering is about in higher profile shows.

Don’t miss it. Makes you laugh, makes you think. Makes you realise Stephens is one of our finest.

A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, Trafalgar Studios, Whitehall, SW1.  Tickets £30-£125, until 30 November 2019.

Last Updated 19 October 2019