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Saved
By Edward Bond
Directed by Richard Cotovsky
Produced by Marry-Arrchie Theatre
At Angel Island
735 W. Sheridan Road
Chicago, IL
Call 773-871-0442, tickets $18 - $20 - $22
Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 pm
Sundays at 7 pm
Running time is 2 hours, 40 minutes with intermission
Through February 25, 2007
I write about violence as naturally as Jane Austen wrote about manners. Violence shapes and obsesses our society, and if we do not stop being violent, we have no future -- Edward Bond
Someone needs to save us from Saved
British playwright Edward Bond is either a genius or a terrible writer depending whom you ask. His controversial 1965 Saved was initially banned in Britain and has been vilified by many. Saved, now running in a sluggish production at Marry-Arrchie Theatre, explores the dehumanizing environment and moral emptiness of the working-class world of South London in the 60’s. I have several problems with this play and the production presented by the usually worthy Marry-Arrchie Theatre Company was below their standards.
First, the play is a slowly paced 2 hours and 40 minutes. Second, dialect coach Eva Breneman got the entire cast to sport such authentic cockney accents that it hurt the play because playwright Edward Bond’s script is so full of cockney, lower-class slang and idioms that I couldn’t understand much of the dialogue. When actors use such rich accents and speak in strange idioms, much information can get lost. Many of the exchanges were rendered meaningless. This play needs subtitles! Thirdly, Bond’s script is laced with beastliness and unmotivated violence. Fourth, much of the emotional-charged scenes were filled with shouting and screaming. Actors went off in rages without adequate motivation. I got tired of the rages. Also, since key elements were unintelligible, the story became difficult to follow. Add the sluggish pace and the result made the work seem like it would never end.
Lastly, the subject matter was depressing and filled with hopelessness. A young man, Len (Robert Fagin) meets a girl, Pam (Michaela Petro), they have sex and she gets pregnant. Len moves into her family’s apartment after the baby is born. Pam quickly rejects him and her mother, Mary (Molly Reynolds) and her father, Harry (Lee Kanne) seem coldly indifferent to anything around them. Pam rejects the baby as shown in a scene where Len is eating dinner; Pam, Mary and Harry are sitting in the living room watching TV while the baby cries loudly. The crying goes on for several minutes and no one does anything about it until Mary turns the TV’s volume up so she can’t hear the baby’s cries.
The show gets even more hollow and disgusting in a later scene where Pam is out looking for Fred (Dan Kuhlman) another lover and possible father to her baby. When he rejects her, she leaves the baby in his buggy and leaves the area. Fred’s mates, a group of amoral teens, start harassing the baby by rocking the buggy recklessly as they escalate their terror on the infant by poking their fingers on the baby’s body while spitting on the child. Fred watches then joins the action. Stones are thrown into the buggy as the group is having a grand old time laughing while physically hurting the infant. One of the gang throws a large rock violently into the buggy as the group runs away knowing that have severely injured the baby. Later we learn that Fred is in prison for the manslaughter of the child and the rest of his mates weren’t charged. We never know why.
The play wonders along with more screaming and shouting until Bond seemed to finally end this oddly weird play. We have to endure 2 hours and 40 minutes about people with no sense of consciousness or responsibility as they lack communication skills and any sense of morality. If you want to see a most depressing work about worthless, unlikable people who speak in a cockney slang that is quite difficult to understand, then Saved is your play. I liked the work of Rob Fagin (Len). He tried to give his character a full dimension of humanity. It is the writing and the authentic accents that doomed the play for me. I never thought I’d see a play where terrific realistic accents would hurt the production. Then again, nothing could have saved Saved.
Not Recommended
Tom Williams
Tom99@chicagocritic.com for comments
Talk Theatre in Chicago podcast
Date Reviewed: January 18, 2007
Jeff Recommended
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