The world must have been a more gracious place thirty years ago. How else to explain the cause celebre Peter Nichols' dark comedy, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, became, all because a tired middle-class couple made jokes about raising a severely retarded and paraplegic daughter. Maybe Joe Egg opened the way for Timmy in "South Park," but there's little else to recommend the piece now - especially judging from the long, tedious, low-voltage revival now at the American Airlines Theater. Giving Nichols' half-kitchen-sink/half-satirical work the benefit of the doubt, we can pin some blame on Eddie Izzard, who's giving a fascinating performance to the first two rows of the audience and leaving everyone else in the auditorium yawning and asking, "What'd he say?"
Victoria Hamilton does better as the wife who obsesses over the girl to the detriment of her marriage, with Michael Gaston breathing some life into the second act as a well-to- do socialist prone to moral judgments and halfway solutions. Add 1/2* if the endless sound of Britons bantering makes you feel more intellectual.
