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Bond, Edward

Entry updated 11 March 2024. Tagged: Author, Theatre.

(1934-2024) UK librettist and playwright, active from the late 1950s into the second decade of the twenty-first century, notable for his excoriations – both in terms of discourse and through the extreme violence of many of his plays – of the British class system, of the Politics that supports it, and (from a Marxist perspective) of the late capitalism that makes its continuance possible. It may not be adventitious that his first West End premiere came only half a century after his produced play. Some of his early work suffered from the conspicuously slanted application of government censorship of staged performances as per the Theatres Act of 1843 (only erased from the books in 1968, when the Lord Chamberlain was finally stripped of his [always his] power to censor theatrical performances). Much of Bond's early work was variously banned, beginning with The Pope's Wedding (performed 1962; 1971), and Early Morning (performed 1968; 1968), many of them using the tools of Fantastika as rhetorical gestures to flay complacency; the Dystopia created by a paranoid monarch in Lear (performed 1971; 1972 chap), for instance, is physically defined by no more than an impenetrable wall, reduced to irrelevance by the later blinding of the deposed ruler. His opera with Hans Werner Henze (1926-2012), The English Cat (performed 1983), is a Satirical Beast Fable [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below].

Bond is of more direct sf interest for his War Plays sequence comprising The War Plays / 1/2: Red Black and Ignorant; The Tin Can People (#1 performed 1984, #2 performed 1985; omni 1985), plus The War Plays: A Trilogy: Pt 3: Great Peace (performed 1985; 1985 chap), the first two plays depicting Post-Holocaust life after the end of World War Three as brutal and hopeless, the third seeming to offer, perhaps rather gingerly, some hope for communitarian life, in small enclaves. A further play, The Crime of the Twenty-First Century (performed 1999; 1999) reiterates, against an abstractly devastated Near Future background, a similar strongly expressed jeremiad. The late Chair Trilogy [for details see Checklist below] depicts Dystopian Near Future Britain with an emphasis on the barren Cities. Bond's later work – like his last play Dea (performed 2016; 2016 chap), once again set after a terrible war – was frequently deprecated in the UK, though his reputation remained high on the Continent. [JC]

Edward Bond

born London: 18 July 1934

died Great Wilbraham, Cambridgeshire: 3 March 2024

works (highly selected)

series

War Plays

The Chair Plays

  • The Chair Plays: Have I None; The Under Room and Chair (London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2012) [omni of the three named plays: for performance details see separate citations below: The Chair Plays: pb/]
    • Have I None (London: Bloomsbury, 2014) [play: ebook: separate issue of the named play above: first performed 2 November 2000 Big Brum Theatre-in-Education Company, Birmingham, England: The Chair Plays: na/]
    • Chair (London: Bloomsbury, 2014) [play: ebook: separate issue of the named play above: Radio play: first broadcast 7 April 2000 BBC Radio 4: first stage performance 2006 Avignon Festival, Avignon, France: The Chair Plays: na/]
    • The Under Room (London: Bloomsbury, 2014) [play: ebook: separate issue of the named play above: first performed 9 October 2005 Big Brum Theatre-in-Education Company, Birmingham, England: The Chair Plays: na/]

individual titles

  • The Pope's Wedding (London: Methuen, 1971) [play: first performed 9 December 1962 Royal Court Theatre, London: hb/photograph of performance]
  • Early Morning (London: Calder and Boyars, 1968) [play: first performed 31 March Royal Court Theatre, London: hb/photograph of performance]
  • The Crime of the Twenty-First Century (London: Bloomsbury 3PL, 1999) [play: first performed 1999 Théâtre national de la Colline, Paris: pb/]
  • Lear (London: Eyre Methuen, 1972) [play: chap: first performed 29 September 1971 Royal Court Theatre, London: pb/]
  • Dea (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016) [play: chap: first performed 24 May 2016 Seacombe Theatre (Sutton Theatres), London: pb/]

links

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