Restoration (play)

Restoration is a 1981 play by English dramatist Edward Bond.

Restoration
Written byEdward Bond
Date premiered21 July 1981 (1981-07-21)
Original languageEnglish
SubjectClass conflict

Reception

While Ian Stuart reports that Restoration received mixed reviews,[1] many critics have praised the play. Mel Gussow of The New York Times stated in 1986 that while the "text does not avoid didacticism and the contemporary connection has not been adequately resolved", Restoration "is, at its core, an abrasive indictment of a society eager to set its own house on fire."[2] 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 wrote that while "the unity of working classes against capital – the play's polemical aim – is difficult, in the nineties to regard as anything but historical fantasy [...] what cannot be gainsaid is the brilliance of Bond's language and dramaturgy".[3] The Guardian's Lyn Gardner praised Restoration as "a play that rings with wild laughter, and chills you to the bone" despite being "slow to catch fire".[4]

Dominic Cavendish said it gets "sharper and sharper, at once funnier and nastier, as the evening progresses."[5] 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.[6] 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."[7]

Restoration 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".[8] In 2011, Judith Newmark of St. Louis Post-Dispatch lauded it 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.”[9]

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".[10]

References
  1. Stuart, Ian (1996). Politics in Performance: The Production Work of Edward Bond, 1978-1990. P. Lang. ISBN 978-0-8204-3014-0.
  2. Gussow, Mel (1986-02-02). "Theater: 'Restoration,' Revised, at Arena Stage 12>". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-06-26.
  3. Weeks, Stephen (1993). "Review of Restoration". Theatre Journal. 45 (2): 241–242. doi:10.2307/3208929. ISSN 0192-2882.
  4. Gardner, Lyn (2006-09-15). "Restoration, Old Vic, Bristol". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-07-07.
  5. Cavendish, Dominic (2006-10-02). "On the road". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 2020-07-07.
  6. Innes, Christopher (2002-11-28). Modern British Drama: The Twentieth Century. Cambridge University Press. p. 173. ISBN 978-0-521-01675-9.
  7. Ravenhill, Mark (2006-09-08). "Acid tongue". The Guardian. Retrieved 2020-06-26.
  8. "Best of Bond". The Guardian. 2008-01-21. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-07-01.
  9. Newmark, Judith (2011-08-08). "'Restoration' at St. Louis Shakespeare strangles old conventions". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Retrieved 2020-07-13.
  10. 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 2020-06-22.
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