Edward Bond

I have always been attracted and moved by your work because I find in it something very basic to a shared humanness. In some ways it reminds me of Yeats. For an English person to respond to Yeats is necessary to respond to Yeats’ Irish culture, which gives his writing a strange Celtic power, a sort of darkness that spreads light. I think your work has much of the same power. Your plays explode on the page and they would on the stage. By explosion I do not mean the silly, bizarre attractions of much contemporary theatre and film. They are more profound—it’s not just as if buildings or landscapes or people or bombs or spaceships exploded. It is a reality itself that exploded—so intense is the search for understanding and meaning. At the same time they put on stage the casual violence of the street and the professional cruelty of power, the bright light of the sun and the dust it shines on. The plays are as contemporary and accessible as today’s newspaper but they are also crude and visionary. They are written with relentless dynamism. Someone once asked for a blanket big enough to cover the old world—these plays seem to ask for a bandage big enough to cover the world’s wounds. Yet, given our situation—they are written with audacious hope. It is human and above all humane. You and your plays are in my head and can’t be forgotten.