Birthday [Paperback]

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.

Birthdayachieves 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'slatest playHaunted Childopened at the Royal Court in December 2011. Previous plays include his debutSome Voices, which won him the John Whiting Award and which he later adapted for film, premiering at Cannes in 2000, andDumb Showin 2004. His other credits includeBlue/Orangeat the National Theatre, which transferred to the West End and for which he received Olivier, Evening Standard and Critics' Circle Awards andLandscape with Weaponat the National Theatre. For film, he most recently adaptedThe Roadby Cormac McCarthy. He also wrote the screenplay forEnduring Loveand wrote the BBC2 detective seriesMoses Jones.

Penhall's gruesomely entertaining new comedy & Penhall is onto an absolute winner here, taking an inspired idea and using its inversion of normal biological procedure to breed a fertile mix of existential questions and corporeal, sometimes gross-out hul#,