Short description:

First published in 1977, The Plays of Edward Bond offers help and stimulation to readers and theatre-goers who want to know more about Edward Bond's recurrent concerns as a playwright.

Long description:

First published in 1977, The Plays of Edward Bond offers help and stimulation to readers and theatre-goers who want to know more about Edward Bond's recurrent concerns as a playwright. In attempting to counter much of the received critical opinion about Bond’s work, Tony Coult sets out to show how Bond’s attitudes to religion and superstition, nature and politics, the family and the individual are given brilliant theatrical form in the plays. There are, too, chapters on the plays in performance, dealing with language and stagecraft, and on the often stormy history of Bond’s relationship with the British Theatre. This makes for a fresh and unusual approach to a playwright’s work, and one particularly situated to the closely related rational theatre of Edward bond. This is a must read for scholars and researchers of theatre and performance studies and British theatre.

“… a helpful guide to a demanding and awkward writer. The case for bond is made-and won hands down”.

---Anthony Everitt, RSC Newspaper

“Tony Coult, naturally, is an enthusiast though not an entirely uncritical one. He runs us first through the chronological outline of Bond’s career, then gives us chapters on various clusters of themes and attitudes in Bond’s work … One could call the book a useful introduction, but despite its relative brevity it is a lot more concentrated and a lot more demanding than that would seem to imply.”

---John Russell Taylor, Times Educational Supplement

Table of Contents:

Preface to the Reissue Introduction 1. Background 2. Gods 3. The World 4. Society 5. Intimates 6. The Individual and Art 7. Stagecraft Bibliography Index