By Joy Watters, at Dundee Rep

HIS PLAYS are rarely seen in this country, but this weekend two of Edward Bond’s works were performed at opposite ends of the country.

His 1973 play, The Sea, had its West End debut, while in Dundee the Rep’s Youth Theatre Company (YTC) joined with the Ensemble to present The Children.

Bond’s interest in writing for children has produced some bleak moments, and the Dundee production—on the eve of what is deemed by some to be the most depressing day of the year—seems entirely appropriate.

The playwright shocked audiences in 1965 with Saved, a grim picture of city life that included the stoning of a baby.

In The Children, the young people’s weapon of choice is the brick, part of the fabric of a society from which they are estranged.

Set in the future, The Children shows a group of young people in a dark, violent environment.

A needy mother asks her child to set a house on fire, using emotional blackmail to achieve the task.

The child obliges, and death and destruction follows as the perpetrator sets off with a band of his peers on a countrywide journey.

Ensemble members Irene MacDougall and Robert Paterson join the young actors, while other YTC members were twinned with the professional backstage team of associate director Sarah Brigham’s production.

The cast displays an energy and conviction in their performances in this work of unrelenting gloom.

Carefully choreographed and presented, the production is impressively assembled; however, it is the sort of work that divides an audience with its portrayal of a group of hoodies descending into violence, death, class war and anomie.