Peter Nichols
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Roundabout’s revival of A Day in the Death of Joe Egg marks a resurgence of interest in Peter Nichols’ plays.
An interview by John Istel
Think of Peter Nichols as a playwright on parade. He’s had three major works revived in London in the last couple of seasons, including Passion Play and his revue-style work based on his Army days in the Far East, Privates on Parade. The third, director Laurence Boswell’s acclaimed staging of Joe Egg, comes to Roundabout Theatre Company’s American Airlines Theatre this spring after an 18-month run in the West End. At 75, Nichols is still working hard—finishing a book for a musical about Hoagy Carmichael, completing a commission on the subject of genetics, "having a go" at a couple of novels. "I just keep writing all the time because I enjoy it," he says.
Nichols wrote Joe Egg, his first stage play, in 1967, about ten years after John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger affixed the "angry young men" label on a postwar British generation. Nichols never seemed to fit neatly into such trends, although Bri, the main character in Joe Egg is clearly a frustrated, even angry, husband to an eternally loving wife and mother, Sheila. Nichols’ singularity partly derives from his insistence that the personal have primacy over the political, and that comedy and tragedy should learn to snuggle up together.
Joe Egg was inspired by Nichols’ own experience raising a severely brain-damaged daughter (she died a few years after the original production), but the play instead chooses to focus on Sheila and Bri’s marriage as they care for "Joe," their ten-year-old girl—a "living parsnip," as her father affectionately calls her. As Roundabout rehearsals were gearing up, with a new American cast supporting two critically acclaimed British leads, Eddie Izzard (Bri) and Victoria Hamilton (Sheila), the playwright talked to Front & Center from his home in England.
FRONT & CENTER: I know Joe Egg was based on your personal experience, but do you remember a specific moment or image that made you realize that you had to write this play?
PETER NICHOLS: I had been writing original plays for television for a good few years. I wanted always, of course, to write a stage play. I wrote it in 1966 and it was first staged here in ’67, and it went to America in ’68.
I was just waiting for the right... well, the right style to come along rather than the right subject. I wanted to find an original theatrical way.
You’re referring to the way the characters break into comedy routines or sketches? That gave you the right form?
Yes. It’s inspired by acts like Mike Nichols and Elaine May, as much as anything. I didn’t take their style directly, but it was just the idea that two people could be half-improvising and talking like the way that they did. Of course, some spaces for improvisations are written into the play.
They’re kind of like cadenzas in classical music...
Exactly. Eddie Izzard as Bri does a bit more improvising being a comedian. So that’s quite interesting. He’s a brilliant actor as well. I always wanted him as Bri in Joe Egg after I’d seen him play Lenny Bruce in Peter Hall’s production of Lenny.
The British music hall tradition seems to have been a big influence on your work. Why is that?
Well, it’s one of those things that’s often said about the play. In fact, when I was going to that sort of show in the 1930s and ’40s, they weren’t, strictly speaking, music hall. They were variety shows. I don’t know what the exact equivalent is in America. It’s not vaudeville. It’s certainly not burlesque. But it’s a show consisting of a series of different acts—revue, variety, cabaret.
It’s a powerful way to deal with such an intimately emotional subject. Essentially, it’s ironic, in the Socratic sense. It’s a serious argument rendered in a light or antithetical way. You’ve got a subject that you would normally treat emotionally, empathetically, or tragically even, and instead it’s treated rather whimsically.
"When you’re watching the play, it becomes not so much about the child, but about these parents and their love for each other."
Would you say the main theme of Joe Egg explores how the quality of a life makes it worth living?
It’s also about how life goes on—no matter what happens to you. You may have a personal tragedy or catastrophe in your life but you have to live with it. And these people in Joe Egg have been doing it for ten years when we meet them. So it’s nothing new. It’s not like a disaster happens in front of our eyes. What we see is a continuance, a day in the continuing half-life of this child.
How quickly did the play write itself? Did it pour out in a couple of weeks like some playwrights claim?
I’ve never had that much luck. I did three or four different drafts, and each was very different. There was an actual killing of the child in the first draft, and it wasn’t the father who did it. There was a draft where there was a film unit that came into the house to make a film about the child. There were all sorts of things like that which were eventually discarded. Then it became the play that it is. I worked a great deal on it with Michael Blakemore, who was the original director. He was the one who actually got it on at Glasgow Citizens Theatre after it was turned down by every producer in the country. People would tell me they would no more do my play than go across Niagara in a barrel. It certainly didn’t appear to be very commercial. In fact, there was a millionaire property dealer who I met at a party who said, "What do you mean writing that play like that? I tried to lose money on it. I invested it to lose and now it turns out that with the Broadway production and the film I’m actually making money. [Laughs] He’d bet the wrong horse.
Apparently you also had problems with the office of the Lord Chamberlain, who used to censor every play produced in Britain. I can’t imagine what objections he found with Joe Egg. Michael Blakemore and I went to the Lord Chamberlain’s office. Back then it was in St. James Palace, which is now where Prince Charles has his offices. They made certain conditions, some of which were extraordinary. They said, "What about this scene where the man and woman are talking about going to bed together. Is the child onstage for that?" I said, "Yeah, in a wheelchair." They said, "We can’t have that—the father proposing to go bed with the mother while the child’s listening." I said, "But she’s so handicapped she doesn’t know what’s happening. She’s brain-damaged." They said, "Yes, but it’ll be played by an actress, so the audience will know it’s not a real handicapped child onstage." So I said, "Well, what do you want us to do?" They said, "You can wheel her offstage, have the conversation, then wheel her back on." I said, "But she’ll be behind a canvas flat and she’ll hear every word—she’ll have been at rehearsals anyway." And they said, "Yes, but the audience won’t see her listening."
In some ways your ironic approach to this material seems ahead of its time.
I’d prefer to be bang on my time. Then I’d get more productions. One of the things we had to decide for this revival was in what period to set this production. The 1960s are not that long ago for it to be a period piece. So you have to decide to fudge that a little bit and not set it so it’s part of the swinging ’60s, where everyone’s wearing mini-skirts. You try to draw attention away from those aspects. [Director] Laurence Boswell and the designers did that very well. Otherwise, the language hasn’t dated, the attitudes haven’t dated. The treatment of the child has dated. That’s the thing that people would find most of its period.
What do you mean by that?
There are probably different medical treatments now. There were no prenatal examinations, no ultrasound, or any of those things. But then again, our daughter was born absolutely physically perfect. She wasn’t in any way deformed or abnormal. That only happened as she got on because she couldn’t exercise. She was a perfectly beautiful baby. Her brain was damaged at birth—that’s what it was.
Joe Egg has been produced around the world-from Belgium to Berlin to Broadway. Is it emotionally hard for you to go see productions?
No, we wore that out a long time ago. My wife and I were very moved by it when we first saw it, at which time our child was already permanently in hospital. But when you’re watching the play, it becomes not so much about the child, but about these parents and their love for each other. My wife and I have been married since 1960. I guess I’ve always thought of Joe Egg as a love story.
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