| The War Plays | |
|---|---|
 Front cover of a 1998 release containing the trilogy | |
| Written by | Edward Bond |
| Date premiered | 29 May 1985 (Red Black and Ignorant) 29 May 1985(The Tin Can People) 17 July 1985(Great Peace) 25 July 1985(Trilogy) [1] |
| Original language | English |
| Subject | Nuclear war |
The War Plays (sometimes referred to as The War Trilogy) is the name often given to a trilogy of plays by English dramatist Edward Bond: Red Black and Ignorant, The Tin Can People, and Great Peace.
Max Stafford-Clark has written that with the Barbican production of The War Plays, Bond "reduced a talented cast into a stumbling and incoherent shambles of walking wounded. Edward Bond is simply the most difficult person I have worked with in 40 years." [2] In 1996, author Janelle G. Reinelt described the English reception as "chilly". [3] Author Michael Mangan commented that the 1995 Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe performance was quite successful, however, and that in France the work "was described as the most important play written since the Second World War." [4]
While Bond is best known for his plays in the 1960s and 1970s, Peter Billingham in 2007 referred to The War Trilogy as one of his major late works (along with Restoration, Coffee, and Born). [5] They were collectively listed by Michael Billington as one of the five greatest works of dystopian drama. He dubbed them "[d]isquieting, dystopian and too important to be ignored." [6] In a 2018 thesis, Chien-Cheng Chen listed the trilogy as a highlight among the contemporary British dramas he had read, and lauded "its versatile use of dramatic forms and its profound exploration of modern human conditions." [7]
In The Performance of Power (1991), Reinelt compared the trilogy favorably with other works of contemporary British theatre that contain utopian elements, saying that "the combination of socialist and feminist issues raised in [...] The War Plays best approaches the imaginative task of conceiving and embodying an alternative reality. [...] [the plays] address important issues concerning the socialization of family roles. They deconstruct the notion of 'natural' mother, with its associations of an instinctual bond between mother and child based on birthing, and replace it with a notion of community nurturing". [8]
Conversely, Keith Colquhoun called the plays "particularly unremitting in tone". [9] In a 2010 thesis, Frank A. Torma criticized “Bond’s attempt in his epic works, like The War Plays and Human Cannon, to give the characters poetry to say in direct address to the audience. Bond’s poetic voice is not exceptional and the result of its insertion in his plays negatively postpones the dramatic flow.” [10] After seeing a 2010 performance of Red Black and Ignorant directed by Maja Milatovic-Ovadia, Ian Shuttleworth of Financial Times wrote, "Bond shows his skill at flinty poetry, but also includes some crass agitprop, and even when his writing feels prophetic it seems like the prophecy of a Cassandra, encouraging repudiation rather than consideration." [11]
Harold Pinter was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party (1957), The Homecoming (1964) and Betrayal (1978), each of which he adapted for the screen. His screenplay adaptations of others' works include The Servant (1963), The Go-Between (1971), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), The Trial (1993) and Sleuth (2007). He also directed or acted in radio, stage, television and film productions of his own and others' works.
Edward Bond is an English playwright, theatre director, poet, dramatic theorist and screenwriter. He is the author of some fifty plays, among them Saved (1965), the production of which was instrumental in the abolition of theatre censorship in the UK. Other well-received works include Narrow Road to the Deep North (1968), Lear (1971), The Sea (1973), The Fool (1975), Restoration (1981), and the War trilogy (1985). Bond is broadly considered among the major living dramatists but he has always been and remains highly controversial because of the violence shown in his plays, the radicalism of his statements about modern theatre and society, and his theories on drama.
The Sea is a 1973 play by Edward Bond. It is a comedy set in a small seaside village in rural East Anglia during the Edwardian period and draws from some of the themes of Shakespeare's The Tempest. It was well-received by critics.
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Chicken Soup with Barley is a 1956 play by British playwright Arnold Wesker. It is the first of the 'Wesker trilogy' – being followed by Roots and I'm Talking About Jerusalem – and was first performed on stage in 1958 at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry, transferring later that year to the Royal Court Theatre in London. It is considered to be an important play in the history of post-war British theatre, and one of the few English plays with a sympathetic portrayal of a communist family. The character of Sarah was based on Arnold Wesker's aunt, Sarah Wesker, who was a trade union activist in the East End of London.
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Bingo: Scenes of Money and Death is a 1973 play by English playwright Edward Bond. It depicts an ageing William Shakespeare at his Warwickshire home in 1615 and 1616, suffering pangs of conscience in part because he signed a contract which protected his landholdings, on the condition that he would not interfere with an enclosure of common lands that would hurt the local peasant farmers. Although the play is fictional, this contract has a factual basis. Bingo is a political drama heavily influenced by Bertolt Brecht and Epic theatre. Some have praised Bond's portrayal of Shakespeare while others have criticized it.
The Fool: Scenes of Bread and Love is a play by the English playwright Edward Bond. It traces the life of the poet John Clare against the backdrop of the Industrial Revolution, from his roots in rural East Anglia via literary success in London to his final years in a lunatic asylum. The play was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre in 1975, in a production directed by Peter Gill and featuring a cast including Tom Courtenay, David Troughton and Nigel Terry among others.
The Park Theatre opened in Finsbury Park, north London in 2013. It describes itself as "a neighbourhood theatre with global ambition", offering a mixed programme of new writing, classics, and revivals. As well as the main auditorium seating 200, the building includes a 90-seat studio theatre, a rehearsal space and a café bar.
Denise Gough is an Irish actress. She has received a number of accolades for her work in theatre, including two Laurence Olivier Awards as well as a nomination for a Tony Award. Her most internationally renowned screen role is that of Dedra Meero on the Star Wars TV series, Andor.
Blue Heart is two one act plays, written by Caryl Churchill and copyrighted in 1997. The first play, Heart’s Desire, is about a family waiting on the arrival of their daughter Suzy. The second play Blue Kettle, is about a man named Derek who goes around telling women they're his mother because he was adopted at birth. The women believe him and truly find ways to tell him the way he is their son. Blue Heart is highly regarded by critics.
Caryl Lesley Churchill is a British playwright known for dramatising the abuses of power, for her use of non-naturalistic techniques, and for her exploration of sexual politics and feminist themes. Celebrated for works such as Cloud 9 (1979), Top Girls (1982), Serious Money (1987), Blue Heart (1997), Far Away (2000), and A Number (2002), she has been described as "one of Britain's greatest poets and innovators for the contemporary stage". In a 2011 dramatists' poll by The Village Voice, five out of the 20 polled writers listed Churchill as the greatest living playwright.
Jez Bond is a British theatre director. One of the cohort of artistic directors born in the 1960s and 70s who are now running significant UK theatres, he opened the Park Theatre in Finsbury Park, London in 2013.
Sian Clifford is an English actress. She is best known for playing Claire, the older sister of the titular character in the BBC comedy-drama series Fleabag (2016–2019) and also portrayed Martha Crawley in the ITV/Amazon Studios series Vanity Fair (2018). In 2020, she played Diana Ingram in the ITV series Quiz.
Anne-Louise Sarks is an Australian theatre director, writer and actor. She has been the Artistic Director of the Melbourne Theatre Company since October 2021. Her partner is journalist Sean Kelly.
Alice Birch is a British playwright and screenwriter. Birch has written several plays, including Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. for which she was awarded the George Devine Award for Most Promising New Playwright, and Anatomy of a Suicide for which she won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Birch was also the screenwriter for the film Lady Macbeth and has written for such television shows as Succession, Normal People, and Dead Ringers.
Escaped Alone is a 2016 play by Caryl Churchill. Critics' reviews were mostly positive.
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Olly's Prison is a 1993 play by English dramatist Edward Bond. In it, a man who has killed his daughter and forgotten his crime tries to find meaning in his life. The work divided critics.
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