Saved

When Edward Bond’s Saved was first performed in 1965, the play was refused a licence by Chamberlain, and deemed too gritty and controversial for public viewing, mainly due to its notorious scene in which a baby is stoned to death.

Not light viewing, of course, but when done right, Saved can be a truly powerful and provocative production. When done right. And this rendition was so, so wrong.

The overwhelming failure of the play was the direction (or lack of it). First and foremost, the play was far too long, and would have been dramatically improved by some vicious cutting from the production team.

Student drama, by definition, is always be a little more rushed, a little more budget, and a little more amateur than the professional companies.

This is all fine, as long as the production team are aware of this, and, when taking on a west-ender, taper the play to make it fit for their cast and audience. Jack Parlett and his team of Imogen Franklin and Hannah Parelett simply didn’t do this.

The play ran for over two hours, which, given it also had no interval, was over double the length of what it should been.

Had the play been cut at the right places, not only would the cast have had a lot more time to work on their scenes (which did, largely, need a lot more work), but there would have been a much greater chance of keeping the audience engaged.

Now, there is no denying that Saved is a difficult play to do: Bond intended it to be uncomfortable, he wanted the audience to squirm, to cringe, to cover their eyes.

Saved is meant to be harrowing, it’s meant to be thought-provoking: to pull off a play that adheres to all of these points, whilst still being entertaining is a real feat of theatrical prowess. Unfortunately, in this production, only the former was achieved.

The acting largely was disjointed and awkward, with a number of the cast slipping up on lines and coming across as painfully unnatural on the stage. Gabriel Agranoff’s portrayal of Len was over-acted, whilst Harry, played by Samuel Tucker was utterly one-dimensional.

However, there were moments of truly brilliant acting: In particular Julia Kass’s portrayal of the bawdy yet attractive Mary, as well as Ben Walsh’s performance as the leering and cruel Fred.

But the star of the show was Ravi Patel, who delivered an outstanding and somewhat disturbing portrayal of the gang member, Barry.

This could have been a good play, indeed, it could have been mediocre, but the production and direction was incredibly poor and failed to take any notice of either the calibre of cast with whom they were working, or the audience who would be coming to see it.

There were some good moments, but the incohesiveness of the play as whole meant that overall, it was hugely disappointing.