We’re all crippled in some way. It might not show, it might not prevent us from moving, or talking, or thinking, but we are all limited. There are things we can’t do; it’s not in our power to change that.

A day in the death of Joe Egg shows you these limits, and that they can be accepted, fought, and maybe crossed, but not ignored. Brian (Ben Thomson) and Sheila (Molly Shevlin) half-jokingly drag you into their tragedy: having a “spastic parsnip” for a daughter. Their struggle with their child’s condition, which makes her an inanimate object of frustrated fantasies, waves of guilt, and imagined dialogues, is human all along. Unspeakable wishes and concealed resentments are bared on stage. Virtuously or despicably, everyone must cope with the cumbersome presence of Joe, stuck irreversibly in her wheelchair.

The actors lead the audience on a sympathetic tour: you touch Brian’s despair, masked by raw jokes and impatience to live, and you worry every bit as much as loving Sheila, admiring her faith but pitying her for her illusions at the same time. It is hideous but you are as uncomfortable as snobbish Pam when vegetable Joe is motionless on stage. You feel what the actors want you to feel and their performances admirably cover the distance between the audience and the characters.

I didn’t quite know how to take the show’s comic side. Was I allowed to laugh about misery? It felt like violating a taboo. But the laughter was needed for its distressing property, and the script preserved it without disturbing the calamity. The tragedy is not Joe, but those around her. The invisible but tangible barriers to communication, only crossed when the actors address the audience and pour their heart out, keep happiness out of reach. This tension is constantly simmering and the light and sound designs, as well as sharp timing, add to its build up.

One of Brian’s sick jokes seizes the core of it: “Wouldn’t you be relieved if it was over? If Joe died?” In the guilty silence that follows we wonder what our answer would be were we “spastic parents.” This play leaves no room for indifference.