[Bond] provides the most massive demonstration that a new theatre is forming round us, a theatre of acting out rather than analysis, a colloquial theatre that is also visionary and poetic. He constructs his plays poetically, around images: Lear, he says, grew out of the image of the Gravedigger's Boy, and others have begun from phrases or sentences 'which seem to have some sort of curious atmosphere about them that one wants to explore and open up.' (p. 168)

Bond is also a very conscious moralist and has much in common with the writers in epic mode…. There is a similar fascination with Victorian subjects, a similar feeling for big, episodic forms and for broad, pantomime techniques. Linguistically, however, he stands apart. His isn't a Babylonish dialect but something much more convincing, that can sound natural even in the act of defining some darkly fantastic, gargantuan event like...