Saved Lyric Theatre Edition

A new programme text edition of the seminal play Saved, published to coincide with the first professional stage production in over twenty-five years.

First presented at The Royal Court in 1965, Saved was met with moral outrage and uproar, caused fights to break out in the audience and divided critical opinion. Leading to the arrest of the theatre's management, the play was then instrumental in ending stage censorship in the UK. Convinced that no directors were capable of handling the play's difficult themes and exacting narrative, Edward Bond blocked almost all new productions - until now.

Presenting a vision of grim social realism, Saved employs terse, demotic lines and stark visual images to progress the play, while listless, unrooted youths commit casual acts of urban violence, murder and sex. Looking at cultural, moral and literal poverty, and the consequent dislocation of the individual within society, the violence of this brutal, severe play is as challenging today as it was almost fifty years ago.