Narrow Road to the Deep North

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Narrow Road to the Deep North
Narrow Road to the Deep North (Edward Bond).jpg
Written by Edward Bond
Date premiered24 June 1968
Place premiered Belgrade Theatre, Coventry
Original languageEnglish
SettingJapan about the seventeenth, eighteenth or nineteenth centuries

Narrow Road to the Deep North is a 1968 satirical play on the British Empire by the English playwright Edward Bond. [1]

Contents

It is a political parable set in Japan in the Edo period. It deals with the poet Basho and the changing political landscape over about 35 years.

The play won Bond the John Whiting Award for 1968. [2]

Quotation

Of course, that's only a symbol, but we need symbols to protect us from ourselves.

The censor

Because of the play's scenes of violence (it was known in the press as "The One With Five Dead Babies and a Disembowelling"), it was originally refused a theatrical license by the Lord Chamberlain, though permission was eventually given after Bond agreed to some last minute amendments. [3]

Original production

It was first performed in 1968 for the Peoples and Cities conference at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, in a production directed by Jane Howell: [4]

Royal Court Theatre

The play was then staged as part of an Edward Bond season at the Royal Court in 1969, to mark the abolition of stage censorship the previous year. [2]

Critical reception

Bond said he "knew the critics would like it, and they did." [5] The Independent 's Maeve Walsh reported that Narrow Road to the Deep North was found by the critics to be cryptic but was still admired overall. [3] The Observer called it "a funny, ironic and beautiful play...In a series of short elegant scenelets, Brechtian in style, but with a sly mock-Zen lightness all their own, the play compares, and finally equates, the tyranny of brute force and religious conscience." [6] Clive Barnes of The New York Times , despite praising earlier productions, criticized the Vivian Beaumont Theater performance as "distressingly tedious" for the acting and staging. Barnes wrote, "The writing has a fake Oriental archness to it—a solemnity, at times a pomposity. Yet the ideas are fresh. [...] Narrow Road to the Deep North is far better play than it would appear to be from its Lincoln Center production. But on just how much better I will for the moment hold my peace." [7]

Ann Marie Demling noted that it is one of the Bond plays to which "awards and citations of excellence have been given" along with Saved (1965), Lear (1971), Bingo (1973) and The Fool (1975). [8] Richard Stayton of Los Angeles Times wrote that "Bond’s metaphor for the Vietnam War unfortunately travels neatly into the 1990s as a mirror to such tragedies as Bosnia", but panned the performance he had seen (which was by The Actors' Gang). [9] Gerry Colgan of The Irish Times wrote in 2001 that while Bond's works were not generally well-known in Ireland, Narrow Road to the Deep North was a play that had "[resonated] down the years" along with Saved (1965). [10] Michael Mangan described it as one of Bond's "major plays" in a 2018 book on the dramatist. [11] Academic Amer Hamed Suliman dubbed it "one of Edward Bond's most significant works" in 2019. [12]

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Matsuo Bashō, born Matsuo Kinsaku, then Matsuo Chūemon Munefusa, was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Bashō was recognized for his works in the collaborative haikai no renga form; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as the greatest master of haiku. He is also well known for his travel essays beginning with Records of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton (1684), written after his journey west to Kyoto and Nara. Matsuo Bashō's poetry is internationally renowned, and, in Japan, many of his poems are reproduced on monuments and traditional sites. Although Bashō is famous in the West for his hokku, he himself believed his best work lay in leading and participating in renku. He is quoted as saying, "Many of my followers can write hokku as well as I can. Where I show who I really am is in linking haikai verses."

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References

Notes

  1. ↑ Patterson, Michael (22 January 2015). Narrow Road to the Deep North. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acref/9780191760082.001.0001. ISBN   9780191760082 – via www.oxfordreference.com.
  2. 1 2 Billingham, P. (19 November 2013). Edward Bond: A Critical Study. Springer. ISBN   9781137368010 – via Google Books.
  3. 1 2 Walsh, Maeve (21 February 1999). "Thirty years ago today: 'Saved' for the nation, farewell to the censor" . The Independent. Archived from the original on 18 June 2022. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  4. ↑ Bond, Edward (1 January 2014). Bond Plays: 2: Lear; The Sea; Narrow Road to the Deep North; Black Mass; Passion. A&C Black. ISBN   9781472536396 – via Google Books.
  5. ↑ Spencer, Jenny S. (17 December 1992). Dramatic Strategies in the Plays of Edward Bond. Cambridge University Press. p. 255. ISBN   978-0-521-39304-1.
  6. ↑ Bond, Edward (1 January 2014). Bond Plays: 2: Lear; The Sea; Narrow Road to the Deep North; Black Mass; Passion. A&C Black. ISBN   9781472536396 – via Google Books.
  7. ↑ Barnes, Clive (7 January 1972). "Stage: 'Narrow Road to Deep North'". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 10 June 2020.
  8. ↑ Demling, Anne Marie (1983). "The Use of the Grotesque in the Plays of Edward Bond". LSU Digital Commons.
  9. ↑ Stayton, Richard (25 August 1993). "Theater Review: 'Narrow Road' a Bumpy Trip to a Dead End". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 10 June 2020.
  10. ↑ Colgan, Gerry (13 April 2001). "The Crime of the Twenty-First Century". The Irish Times. Retrieved 10 June 2020.
  11. ↑ Mangan, Michael (1 August 2018). Edward Bond. Oxford University Press. p. 31. ISBN   978-1-78694-267-8.
  12. ↑ "Floating above the Stream: A Brechtian Reading of Edward Bond's Narrow Road to Deep North". ResearchGate. Retrieved 10 June 2020.
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