Well no-one can say I didn’t give Edward Bond a fair chance. Eight plays in 18 months. In truth, I’d have probably given up at 7 if it wasn’t for Patrick Stewart leading this one. I feel perfectly entitled to put him in my ‘problem playwrights’ box with Pinter and Chekov, turn the key and move on.
This is a play about Shakespeare (or is it?). I have no idea if it’s historically accurate (how could you know?). Will has returned to Stratford and given up writing – ‘I have nothing left to say’. He hates his daughter and his wife and he’s just waiting to die. It’s the early 17th century, the time of the Enclosures Act, so a land grab by the rich is in full progress and Shakespeare is seemingly complicit as a landowner who turns a blind eye. He’s also watching as a young girl on the run is on the receiving end of rough justice, first beaten, then killed and displayed in public. He’s wrestling with his conscience.
It’s as obtuse as all the other Bond plays. I’m happy to be challenged in the theatre, but I can’t help feeling that this is just covering up the fact that he doesn’t really have anything profound or coherent to say. The first half is extraordinarily dull. If you return for the second (and a lot didn’t) it briefly comes alive in a London tavern scene where contemporary playwright Ben Johnson (an excellent Richard McCabe) gets Shakespeare drunk and rants about anything and everything.
There are some good performances, but Stewart is wasted in this. He’s played it before and quite why he wanted to return to it is beyond me. There’s nothing wrong with the production, it’s just not a good play. I’m prepared to accept that it’s a matter of taste, but it is without a conscience that I give up on a playwright who just doesn’t really do anything for me. To see any more Bond would be just masochistic, I’m afraid.
