KEEPING TOM NICE

by Gannon, Lucy

Tom is approaching his twenty fifth birthday. He is severely handicapped and in spite of growing intervention from the social services he has lived in the care of his parents Doug and Winnie and sister Charlie, who have devoted their lives to him. Tom’s family has coped with the unrelenting strain of maintaining social appearances while caring for his every need but with the arrival of Stephen, a new case worker with a particular insight into Tom’s circumstances, the family is pushed to the breaking point in this rich and compelling examination of a family disintegrating under the pressures of an increasingly complex world. Winner of the 1990 John Whiting Award, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the Richard Burton Drama Award.