Restoration (play)

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Restoration
Written by Edward Bond
Date premiered22 July 1981 (1981-07-22)
Original languageEnglish
Subject Class conflict

Restoration is a 1981 play by English dramatist Edward Bond that has been described as "simultaneously a Restoration comedy, a parody of Restoration comedies, and a dissection of class privilege in the Restoration era." [1] It premiered at the Royal Court Theatre on 22 July 1981 [2] with the master, his wife (Old Lady Are), his servant Bob, and Bob's wife played by Simon Callow, Irene Handl, Philip Davis, and Debby Bishop, respectively.

Reception

Ian Stuart reports that both critics and audiences initially had a lukewarm view of Restoration. [3] Mel Gussow of The New York Times stated in 1981 that it "is overly voluble and attenuated, but [...] filled with astute observations on aristocratic malfeasance as well compromise and cowardice on the part of the lower classes." [4] He said in 1986 that while the text is didactic, Restoration "is, at its core, an abrasive indictment of a society eager to set its own house on fire." [5] University of Washington professor Stephen Weeks, who saw the play in 1992 at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, lauded Restoration as "easily the wittiest of Bond's intertextual adventures [...] Lord Are is a masterly comic creation by any standard". He said that while the unity of working classes against capital was not believable by the 1990s, "what cannot be gainsaid is the brilliance of Bond's language and dramaturgy". [6]

The Guardian 's Lyn Gardner dubbed Restoration "a play that rings with wild laughter, and chills you to the bone" despite being "slow to catch fire". [7] Dominic Cavendish said it gets "sharper and sharper, at once funnier and nastier, as the evening progresses." [8] In 2002, Christopher Innes dubbed Restoration the "only play to rise above this simplification in the recent phase of Bond's career" in which protagonists lack complexity and are either virtuous or evil. [9] Four years later, Mark Ravenhill argued that the play "contains some of Bond's most brilliant writing and perhaps his most memorable character, the monstrous Lord Are [...] Bond's sympathies clearly lie with the servant classes. But he invests the aristocratic characters with such savage comic invention that they are horribly, hilariously watchable." [10]

While Bond is best known for his plays in the 1960s and 1970s, Peter Billingham in 2007 referred to Restoration as one of his major late works (along with the War trilogy, Coffee, and Born). [11] It was listed as a career highlight by The Guardian in 2008, and as one of the playwright's "acutest attacks on the British class system". [12] In 2011, Judith Newmark of St. Louis Post-Dispatch billed the play as a “probing satire [...] with sharp swerves of mood [...] ‘Restoration’ makes for keen political theater, not a billboard for a worthy cause but an exploration of big, demanding themes.” [13]

Conversely, University of Oxford professor David Womersley said that Bond "fails to "[make] his victims engaging". He criticized the song "Mans Groans", stating that the play has "too much of this kind of banal preaching". [14] The Spectator 's Mark Amory praised the performances of Davis and Bishop but wrote, "Some of the words of the songs are simple and strong [...] the music is pretty, and the idea of the actors stepping out of character to express themselves directly to the audience sounds effective. In the event I found it tedious." [15] A reviewer in Evening Standard said that "Bond brilliantly pastiches the quipstrewn badinage of the genre"; however, the reviewer also argued, "The songs make tedious a second half that already springs few surprises. [...] Bond, having impaled his satirical target, seems to stand around, his sword still embedded, wondering what else to do." [16]

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References

  1. ↑ Arendt, Paul (1 August 2006). "Bond set to shock again with suicide bomber song". The Guardian. Retrieved 30 March 2021.
  2. ↑ "BBC Radio 4 FM - 22 July 1981 - BBC Genome". genome.ch.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 30 March 2021.
  3. ↑ Stuart, Ian (1996). Politics in Performance: The Production Work of Edward Bond, 1978-1990. P. Lang. ISBN   978-0-8204-3014-0. "The play received a mixed reception from both critics and public. For many, the 1981 production was only redeemed by the acting of the main characters and the singing of Debbie Bishop as Rose."
  4. ↑ Gussow, Mel (2 August 1981). "STAGE VIEW; SHAKESPEARE'S COMMONERS GET THE ROYAL TREATMENT". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 30 March 2021.
  5. ↑ Gussow, Mel (2 February 1986). "Theater: 'Restoration,' Revised, at Arena Stage 12>". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 26 June 2020.
  6. ↑ Weeks, Stephen (1993). "Review of Restoration". Theatre Journal. 45 (2): 241–242. doi:10.2307/3208929. ISSN   0192-2882. JSTOR   3208929.
  7. ↑ Gardner, Lyn (15 September 2006). "Restoration, Old Vic, Bristol". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 7 July 2020.
  8. ↑ Cavendish, Dominic (2 October 2006). "On the road". The Telegraph. ISSN   0307-1235 . Retrieved 7 July 2020.
  9. ↑ Innes, Christopher (28 November 2002). Modern British Drama: The Twentieth Century. Cambridge University Press. p. 173. ISBN   978-0-521-01675-9.
  10. ↑ Ravenhill, Mark (8 September 2006). "Acid tongue". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 June 2020.
  11. ↑ Bond, Edward; Billingham, Peter (2007). "Drama and the Human: Reflections at the Start of a Millennium". PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art. 29 (3): 1–14. doi:10.1162/pajj.2007.29.3.1. ISSN   1520-281X. JSTOR   30131055. S2CID   57568352.
  12. ↑ "Best of Bond". The Guardian. 21 January 2008. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 1 July 2020.
  13. ↑ Newmark, Judith (8 August 2011). "'Restoration' at St. Louis Shakespeare strangles old conventions". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Retrieved 13 July 2020.
  14. ↑ Womersley, David. "The Social Affairs Unit - Web Review: Edward Bond attempts - and fails - to use drama as a medium to promote "advanced" opinion: Restoration - Edward Bond". Social Affairs Unit. Retrieved 22 June 2020.
  15. ↑ Amory, Mark. "Theatre » 1 Aug 1981 » The Spectator Archive". The Spectator Archive. Retrieved 30 March 2021.
  16. ↑ "Fools enslaved to hierarchy". Evening Standard. 26 September 2006. Retrieved 30 March 2021.
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