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Drama Review

Saved by Edward Bond. Directed by Ian Watkin For the VUW Drama Society. Reviewed by Phillip Mann.

The reputation of Edward Bond's play Saved has not been helped by its sensational publicity. To most people who have heard of it, it is known as the play in which a baby is stoned to death on stage, or as the play that was banned because of its violence. It has been regarded as a play with a burning social message stated in implacable terms to which we had better listen if we want a better future. All of this is to some extent true, but by no means the whole of the story. The Drama Society production of Saved showed that Edward Bond is a very gifted dramatist who has written a play that is at once powerful, restrained, passionate, mature, and last but not least, a very fine piece of theatre. Fortunately Mr Bond is not concerned with messages in the pamphleteer's sense of the word. He does not give solutions. In this play the experience and the progression of the play are one and the same. (Contrast this with Shaw). Mr Bond does not fall into the trap of presenting a simple moral or a facile message. He does not try to bring Godot onto the stage. The play has the simplicity and directness of a ballad. In the hands of a lesser writer the theme of the bored and vicious young people and their equally bored and vicious elders could degenerate into sensationalism. It does not. It does not because Mr Bond's concern is not with theatrical pyrotechnics, but with the sadness and futility of his human beings. Behind the play is the feeling of pity.

The visual realisation of the play was for the most part excellent—a bare stage with actors isolated in light, surrounded by gloom. The very emptiness lent to the actors' voices a hollowness. Some attempt has been made to integrate the auditorium with the stage by covering the sound baffles with boards painted with crude stabbing brush strokes. These struck the only jarring note, since they suggested more the atmosphere for an Artaud mime play. Graffiti would have been better.

As a group the actors worked together magnificently. One felt a depth of preparation behind the scenes. The general quality of the acting was a disciplined unwillingness to exploit the text. How easy it would have been to present a romanticised view of young toughs and adolescents! At odd moments I felt that this virtue became a defect, especially in the scenes where two people face each other, and where the fury, which underlies the terse language of the play breaks through. The failure here was one of movement. All the frustration, hatred, perversity could have been channeled into the way that the fist curled around the stone.

One does not remember individual performances so much as the overall quality of the production. Mr Ian Watkin is to be congratulated for the pace of this production. It is not indulgent, but rather moves rapidly to the final scene in which everything is suggested and nothing really resolved. Artistically this is most satisfactory, and provides a context wherein we can judge the action of the play.

I am grateful to the Drama Society for doing this play, and hope it will be supported by the University and by the public at large.