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Nach dem gleichnamigen Theaterstück von Peter Nichols (1967)
Remake für's Fernsehen "A day in the death of Joe Egg" (Peter Medak, 2002)
"don't just sit there like Joe Egg" scheint ein geflügeltes englisches Wort zu sein für die Tatsache, dass jemand hilflos dasitzt.
Er: Living with Sheila is to welcome death...............
"A comedy about parenting a severely brain-damaged child - based on the personal experience of Nichols and his wife Thelma with their first daughter, Abigail - only a writer as personally involved yet deeply unsentimental and theatrically daring as Nichols could pull it off.
The result is that rare thing: a seriously funny play about a seriously unfunny subject. Nichols' daring in achieving that is astounding enough; but that is not all. He's also constantly playful with theatrical form and convention as well, repeatedly dissolving the fourth wall between the stage and audience as the actors step out of the action and direct address their thoughts to us.
Don't let that put you off. This is no Pirandellian evening of theatrical artifice, but a play shot through with poignant observation of the deadly ordinariness found in a young couple coping with an extraordinary situation." (Mark Shenton, Comedy Theatre, London Westend)
"Some viewers may consider the subject matter inappropriate for comedy, but the film mines its uneasy laughter not from the child's plight but from the eccentricities of the parents' reactions." (Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide)
"The characters of Bri and Sheila - he believes that their daughter's death would be a release whereas his wife, Sheila believes that she will one day recover - represent opposite sides of the moral argument on such cases: do we have the right to decide whether a human being should live or die or is it cruel to artificially prolong a life that consists only of severe fits and constant pain?" (Written by David Claydon {dc6212@bristol.ac.uk})
"'A Day in the Death of Joe Egg' is set in 1967 England, where parents of a young girl with severe cerebral palsy struggle to cope with the difficulties of a lifetime of feeding, bathing and changing little more than a baby. The mother, blaming herself for a difficult birth, hangs on to fruitless hopes of her making progress. The father, a teacher at a run down city school, has retreated into a fantasy world where little Joe becomes the centre piece of a variety of skits and routines based around her. For both parents facing up to the aversion, or patronising help, of outsiders and the possibility of decades more years spent nursing Joe, life has become a daily struggle.
This play deals with the problems faced by carers of severely disabled children. The issues are tellingly highlighted in this wonderfully fresh and confronting play. Often achingly funny, yet always with a bleak and bitter aftertaste, it is challenging and thought provoking. Would life for all of them be better by far if Joe were to die? Just what is gained by the daily struggle of her existence? Or can the bond between parent and child survive any adversity?"
Ankündigung des Class Act Theatre, Perth, Juni, 2009,
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