Plays 1: Saved / Early Morning / The Pope's Wedding

Plays #1

by Edward Bond

Saved - "The most uncompromising, original and un-English English play of the sixties" (Observer); Early Morning - "A gargantuan Swiftian metaphor of universal consumption" (Observer); The Pope's Wedding - "This bizarre and unclassifiable piece is an astonishing tour de force for a first play, and if it comes to that, would be an astonishing tour de force if it were a fifty-first … Bond is an original" (Bernard Levin, Daily Mail)

Genres: Plays, Drama, Theatre

312 pages, Paperback

First published September 8, 1977

About the author

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bond

Reviews

[Algernon]

Consists of three early plays by Bond, from the 1960s: the satirical "Early Morning" and "The Pope's Wedding," as well as "Saved," the realistic working-class drama that established the playwright's name with the public. It also includes his author's note "On Violence," stating his view that "violence is not a function of nature but of human societies."

[Daniel]

Directed from Terry Eagleton's literary expository 'On Evil', Bond's play 'Saved' provided a fundamentally shocking account of casual violence towards a child in which the event itself is denied centre stage - an effect which heightens the sense of indifference.