Saved!

We headed out to the Lyric Hammersmith last Tuesday evening to catch a viewing of Saved, which is a play by Edward Bond.  Hammersmith is a funny place, lots of life and action in the streets, and everyone seems to be either Australian or New Zealander, but then stereotypically that's where they have tended to congregate.  Unlike where we live, where we seem to be surrounded by French people. 

Saved was an interesting play, it was first performed in 1965, though only to private audiences, mainly due to one particular scene.  Even though only a private audience saw this first production, the Lord Chamberlain decided to prosecute all those involved in the production, as the production had been done without a license.  The Lord Chamberlain would have only granted a license if severe cuts were made.  For a play which only recently was severely censored there were an awful lot of kids watching, it seemed like a school activity to go along to the theatre.  Imagine having that in your syllabus!

The Lord Chamberlain is an interesting role, mainly in charge of organising ceremonial activities for the Royal Household, as well as being the official channel of communication between the royals and the House of Lords.  In 1737 the Lord Chamberlain was given the power to veto any performance of any plays, and theatre owners could be prosecuted for staging a play which had not received approval.  This enormous power was altered in 1843 to be more of a censorship role, where the Lord could only prevent performances which they deemed to not be in fitting with good manners or decorum.  This final power was eventually completely abolished in 1968, partly due to the furore over the censorship of this particular play.  Out of interest the first Lord Chamberlain was Thomas Erpingham in 1399.  I love these completely freaky British traditions.

So anyway this was the first production of Saved in 27 years.  One thing I have to say first though is that we got to sit in a Box, you know the little separate areas right above the stage, we got one of those.  The tickets were the same as if you sat with the masses, and perhaps the view wasn't as good, especially when the stage directions called for everyone to cluster right underneath you, but I couldn't resist.  

The play is all about alienation and the effects this has on individuals.  In particular it's about a group of very working-class people and their different responses to their situation.  Which leads to that one particular shocking scene, for those who haven't looked at the wiki page on this, a baby is killed on stage (well obviously not a real baby).

I kind of liked it just because it was so different from anything I'd seen before, plus the actors were all pretty good.  The dialogue and scenes were very sparse which is quite different to the last play we saw, being the Tempest.  I think though if you want to see something on the alienation of people from society and the effect on the individuals then I would recommend Samson and Delilah. It's an Australian film, which I think is more optimistic than Saved, even though Edward Bond himself apparently described the ending as "almost irresponsibly optimistic".  Whether that is true or not is another question.  Personally I didn't find it that optimistic.