Playwright Edward Bond has died aged 89

Edward Bond has died aged 89, it has been revealed.

Bond, born in London in the 1930s, wrote over 50 plays during his lifetime. Amongst the most notable of these was Saved, written in the 1960s but banned by censors. Aligning closely with the Royal Court despite pressures from institutions about the nature and content of his work, a number of Bond’s plays were eventually staged legally following the removal of censorship in 1968.

Other plays across Bond’s lifetime included Early Morning, Lear, The Sea, a translation of Spring Awakening, Bingo, The Fool and Narrow Road to the Deep North. 

Across the 1970s, Bond worked less with the Court and more with the RSC, on shows like Bingo, which followed William Shakespeare as he became a jaded landlord later in life. The RSC also presented Bond’s major trilogy entitled The War Plays. Other venues staging Bond’s work included the Old Vic and the National Theatre.

Into the 21st century, a number of major revivals of Bond’s work gained more traction than his new original texts, with the likes of Lear revived in Sheffield, while Bond’s first West End production, after almost half a century of writing, was a revival of The Sea, directed by Jonathan Kent.

2011 saw a revival of Saved at the Lyric Hammersmith, directed by Sean Holmes. His last original play on UK shores was Dea, performed at Sutton Theatres in 2016.