Book description
The birth of their daughter should be one of the happiest days of Ed
and Lisa's life. An NHS maternity ward and their somewhat unusual
circumstances make for an unsettling and satisfyingly comic sequence of
events that tests their relationship to the core, and raises intrinsic
questions about the nature of birth and renewal, fear and isolation.
Subverting the received gender roles to darkly comic and disturbing
effect, the play charts Ed and Lisa's personally fraught experience at
the behest of an NHS labour ward. Penhall expertly weaves an acutely
funny and emotionally charged sequence of events: he pitches wryly
observed gender perceptions of a quite literal life and death situation
against an indictment of the NHS system. The beautifully observed
writing is at once vicious and searingly tender. Birthday achieves an
intensely comic counterpoint to teh visceral domestic drama sutured to
bigger issues of aspiration, sacrifice, who we are, how we communicate,
the triumph of tolerance, nature and ultimately love. Joe Penhall's
latest play Haunted Child opened at the Royal Court in December 2011.
Previous plays include his debut Some Voices, which won him the John
Whiting Award and which he later adapted for film, premiering at Cannes
in 2000, and Dumb Show in 2004. His other credits include Blue/Orange at
the National Theatre, which transferred to the West End and for which he
received Olivier, Evening Standard and Critics' Circle Awards and
Landscape with Weapon at the National Theatre. For film, he most
recently adapted The Road by Cormac McCarthy. He also wrote the
screenplay for Enduring Love and wrote the BBC2 detective series Moses
Jones.
