The Fool

It’s something of a disgrace that The Fool, a major work, on a par with Bingo and Lear, has had to wait until now to be revived, 35 years after Peter Gill’s Royal Court production.

A significant strength is having Edward Bond himself, an experienced director of his own plays, at the helm.

The Fool begins in 1815, with a post-Waterloo England in the throes of industrial and agricultural turmoil. The well-trodden territory of class unrest is explored, as a rural community, freed from the Napoleonic threat, struggles to shake off the tyranny of feudalism. The iconic scene where a frenzied mob rob and strip the local pastor, all but clawing the flesh from his bones, is deeply disturbing.

What emerges from this whirlpool of desperation is the story of the skirt-chasing, poet-peasant John Clare, whose brief peak declines into the “grotesque oblivion” of madness.

Such is the rigour of Bond’s direction that he raises the Cock’s festival to a new height.  At times he slows the action almost to a halt, allowing the actors to fully inhabit the moment, and no opportunity passes by untapped.

Bond has a terrific cast to work with. Ben Crispin is hypnotic as the poet and, as his wife Patty, both hectoring and vulnerable, Rosanna Miles brims with tears in her silent suffering. James Kenward, who impressed earlier in the season in Olly’s Prison, is excellent as the doomed Darkie, as is the willowy Rebecca Smith-Williams as Clare’s “other wife” Mary.

This is undoubtedly a highlight of the season so far, an evening that is likely to leave a deep impression.

- Simon Thomas