Nichols Plays: 1: Day in the Death of Joe Egg;The National Health; Hearts and Flowers; The Freeway; Forget-me-not Lane

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A rich selection from the best of Nichols' work up to and including his award-winning Privates on Parade

A Day in the Death of Joe Egg is based on the author's experience of having a mentally handicapped child and won the John Whiting Award; The National Health was commissioned by Kenneth Tynan for the National theatre and follows the story of a Labour MP who goes into a state hospital suffering from a nervous collapse. It won the Evening Standard Best Play Award; Forget-me-not Lane is a trip down memory lane from the author's own childhood growing up in the West Country; Hearts and Flowers is a TV play about the rivalry between two brothers, one a school teacher living in Bristol the other a successful news journalist and their shared interest in a woman; Freeway is set in a traffic jam and attempts to answer the question of why the automobile has come to be seen to represent liberty incarnate in the modern era.

Author Bio

Peter Nichols was born in Bristol in 1927 and educated there at the Grammar School and Old Vic Theatre School. After National Service in India, Malaya and Hong Kong, he was an actor in repertory and television for five years, then a teacher in London schools. He has written some twenty original plays and adaptations for television, six feature films and the following stage plays: A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, The National Health, Forget-Me-Not Lane, The Freeway, Chez Nous, Privates on Parade, Born in the Gardens, Passion Play, Poppy, and A Piece of My Mind. These have won four Evening Standard Awards, a Society of West End Theatres Award for Best Comedy and two Best Musical Awards. He was resident playwright at the Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, where he co-directed The National Health. He has also directed revivals of Joe Egg and Forget-Me-Not Lane at Greenwich and the first production of Born in the Gardens at Bristol. The 1985 Broadway revival of Joe Egg won two Tonys. Feeling You're Behind, a book of memoirs, came out in 1984.