Restoration

Published as a programme text to accompany the tour by Oxford Stage Company which plays to Bristol Old Vic, Hackney Empire, Oxford Playhouse and the Northcott Theatre in Exeter. "Bond's great gift as a comic moralist makes Lord Are condemn himself without sacrificing a scintilla of wit. Bond takes the Restoration style, enters it and turns it against itself" Robert Cushman, Observer Edward Bond is "a great playwright - many, particularly in continental Europe, would say the greatest living English playwright" (Independent)

A new edition with programme notes of Bond's play set in eighteenth century England, published to tie in with the tour by Oxford Stage Company.Restoration is set in eighteenth-century England: a world of cruelty, injustice and iron privilege. Lord Are is forced by poverty into an unwanted marriage with the daughter of a wealthy mineowner. One morning, during breakfast, he commits a bizarre and fatal crime. He seeks to pin responsibility for it on his guileless, illiterate footman, Bob Hedges. A battle ensues between Bob's black, justice-hungry wife and the fortified privilege of the ruling classes. This is a new programme text edition of the play with minor revisions to the original text and produced for the tour by Oxford Staeg Company.