Leftist Anthem Restoration

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

Lord Are, the powdered and primping heir to a 600-year-old title, hurtles around the dining room of his country estate, ablaze with rage and grief. He does not mind that his giddy young wife lies dead on the floor, accidentally slain by him as she prankishly impersonated a ghost. What really inflames him is that the breakfast toast has gone cold. In a ranting fury he rings for a servant and, almost as an afterthought, gulls the hapless lackey into believing himself responsible for the killing. Then, confident of his escape and frugal to the last, Lord Are points to the remains of the meal and tells his dupe, with a dismissive flourish, "Throw the toast to the hens on your way to prison."

This savagely funny scene, as momentarily plausible onstage as it is < preposterous in the retelling, is the central event of Edward Bond's Restoration, a stunning leftist anthem masquerading as a literary curiosity. The play marries the style of, say, Congreve or Farquhar with that of Bertolt Brecht: it blends a knowing pastiche of early 18th century comedy of manners with a 20th century call for revolution. Bond, 51, author of such dramas as Saved (1965) and The War Plays (1985), has for two decades been described as one of Britain's most promising playwrights. Yet his work has remained too didactic, too unyielding in its politics, to allow sufficient poetry in his vision. Restoration, first performed in 1981 by London's Royal Court Theater, and The War Plays show little mellowing of that hortatory urge. But as offered by Washington's Arena Stage in what amounts to its U.S. premiere, Restoration proves an urgent, at times overpowering coup de theatre.

Restoration comedy depicted a world obsessed with money, manners, fashion and family tree, severe in its standards of social acceptability and brutal in its treatment of those deemed unfit. Bond's adaptation of the genre retains its rounded invective and withering humor. The wicked lord, pondering the corpse of his rich, social-climbing bride, decides to prop her up at the table: "Stretched out on the floor could only encourage the lowest of surmises." His equally malicious mother, listening to the plea on bended knee of the duped servant's wife, says imperiously, "Get up, child. A thing is not made more impressive by being said by a dwarf." Lest anyone miss the relevance of this portrait of privilege, Bond and Composers Nick Bicat and John McKinney have interspersed 15 eerie, offbeat songs, their lyrics tinged with references to tanks, gas chambers, rockets and other modern manifestations of authoritarian evil.

Arena Stage has long been receptive to avant-garde European writers and directors. In rescuing Restoration from relative obscurity (the only previous U.S. production, in 1985, played five performances at the 99-seat Illusion Theater in Minneapolis), the company has proved especially shrewd. The show displays both the adaptability of Arena's theater-in-the-round space-- actors rise through the floor and almost to the ceiling, musicians are suspended in a metal-mesh box above the stage--and the strength of its newly expanded ensemble. Stanley Anderson is by turns uproarious, winsome and infuriating as the despicable Lord Are. Casey Biggs and Kim Staunton bring dignity and slow- dawning horror to the doomed servant Bob and his wife. And Tom Hewitt excels as the lord's other footman, as defiant as Bob is trusting. In a sardonic twist by Bond, this challenge to authority gets nowhere. Caught as a runaway thief, the self-assertive servant, like the deferential one, is hanged on an unjust day.