Edward Bond's Summer: "a voice from the working class"

Edward Bond's Summer: "a voice from the working class" PHILIP ROBERTS In an unpublished interview given to Salvatore Maiorana in February 1981 (p. 142), Bond states: "It would be too presumptuous of me to say that I consider myself a voice ofthe working class but I do consider myself a voice from it. ..." The interview took place less than a month after the final draft of Summer was completed and at the same time as detailed notes for his new play, Human Cannon, began (although preliminary notes for the latter play exist from July 1979). There are notes, dated July 1979, fortwo plays, Restoration and Hlimon Cannon. Bond decided to write Restoration first, but before turning his attention to the laner of the two plays, he embarked upon Summer. Notes for several plays often coexist in Bond's papers, but the play in question, once begun in detail, proceeds to the virtual exclusion of all else, apart from occasional revisions. Thus, although Bond continued to modify Restoration in parts until October 1980, the sixth and final draft was completed in July. Early notes for Summer are extant for April 1980, but detailed notes commence in August. Before picking up Human Cannon again, although he worked on the playa little from February 1981, Bond directed Restoration at the Royal Court (opened July 1981) and also Summer at the National Theatre (opened January 1982). Once Summer opened, Human Cannon came into focus again and was substantially completed by the end of July 1982. The writing of Summer is characteristic ofBond's rigorous working methods and divides into three stages. The first consists ofdetailed, handwritten notes on theme and structure contained in four small notebooks beginning in August 1980 and running to November (although there are a few notes dated after this and going to mid-January 1981). The second is a typed "preliminary outline" for 27 October 1980, followed by a "draft outline" on 14 November. The third comprises six drafts of the play, typed from November 1980 to January 198!. At the end of this stage, a clean copy was sent to Bond's agent, Margaret Ramsay, early in 1981.' The play began rehearsals in December 1981, opened 128 PHILIP ROBERTS in the Cottesloe auditorium of the National Theatre on 27 January 1982, and closed on 19 June. The reviews (about par forthe course in confrontation with a play by Bond) ranged from the accusation that Bond's cast ofmind is "typically Khmer Rouge" to the beliefthat Summer "puts him back in his rightful place, in the very forefront of our living dramatists.'" I am not concerned particularly with the critical schizophrenia which has attended Bond's work since Saved in 1965; nor with the fact that some reviewers see nothing alarming either in maintaining an entrenched hostility regardless of the play in question (at least consistency is not in doubt), or in consigning Bond to the status of a burnt-out case one year and hailing the importance of a new work the next. It is an unfortunate concomitant of instant criticism that such vagaries are inevitable. An examination of the evolution of a play such as Summer does not excuse what may be regarded by some as problems in its finished state. The intention here is not to protect the play, which stands or falls as it exists publicly. But such an analysis may help to clarify the author's relationship to his material. It may show why the play took the shape it did. Above all, it may be of some use to theatre workers to illustrate the driving preoccupations of a writer whose art displays both a remarkable consistency of development and a readiness to experiment with new ways of showing reality (i.e., truth) on the stage. Since it is impossible, for reasons of length, to chronicle every step in the development of the play, I propose to look at five areas in the notebooks. The first of these concerns the relationship between mundane living and the processes of history; the second, the central conflict between Marthe and Xenia; the third, the alliance of Xenia and the German soldier; the fourth, the analysis of subjective...