Theater moralist, scandal author, favorite of the Germans: the great British playwright Edward Bond has died at the age of 89.
Edward Bond’s name will forever be linked to a horrific crime: the stoning of a baby in a stroller. A horde of brutalized thugs from a London working-class neighborhood perpetrate the crime in Bond’s second play “Rescued” (Saved), which premiered at the Royal Court Theater in 1965 and immediately alerted the censor. The play was banned – and became a scandal that made theater history. The dull violence, the emotional neglect and inability to communicate of the young protagonists were difficult for many to bear. Likewise her complete lack of empathy. “I don’t have any feeling yet,” says one of the perpetrators about the infant. And another: “Like animals.”