THEATRE / The moral morass: Della Couling on an Edward Bond premiere in Paris

As a playwright, Edward Bond, like Harold Pinter, seems to have become stranded on high moral ground, but unlike Pinter, whose latest plays are mere telegrams announcing doom, Bond has become more and more prolix. In his latest play, The Company of Men, premiered at Theatre de la Ville in Paris, we are subjected to more than three hours of very heavy text, mostly in the form of long speeches.

The play is divided into nine scenes, or 'Units', as they are called. In Unit 1, Leonard Oldfield (Benoit Regent), the adopted son of a very big arms manufacturer, is being persuaded by his father's right-hand man Dodds (Wladimir Yordanoff) to borrow money behind his father's back and buy out one Wilbraham (Bernard Ballet), who inherited his own father's business but spends his time gambling and drinking. Dodds plays on Leonard's frustrations as the son of a father who won't let go of the reins. Old man Oldfield (Jean-Marc Bory) enters and is congratulated on having just outflanked a rival, Hammond, who wanted to buy him up. Oldfield has borrowed in order to buy up 80 per cent of the shares in his own company.

There is a most peculiar butler, Bartley (Carlo Brandt) who, at the end of Unit 1 comes in, sits down and asks Leonard to explain to him what has been going on. This is very useful for us too, as the complexity of all these takeovers and deals knocks the Maastricht treaty into a cocked hat.

All this happens on a stark set, bare but for two leather armchairs and a curved dark red backdrop (blood? the womb?). For all the complications of the story then, it is clear that what we are really in for is that weary game of Hunt the Symbol. The play is so swamped with messages that none of these characters come to life. Hartley, for example, begins his questioning of Leonard as the voice of the simple man, but later turns into a violent, alcoholic counter-image of the big businessmen. Leonard starts as some improbable latter-day Candide and ends as Hamlet. Having tried and failed to kill his adopted father, he drops out for a few months to team up with Hartley. Then he goes back to his father and finally, after his father dies, back to Hartley's hideout. Then he hangs himself. Stop me if I'm boring you.

Director Alain Francon tries his best to wring some dramatic life out of this turgid text by creating a mood of black humour. To be fair, this element is in the text, but so buried in maudlin moralising that the sparse moments of comedy fail to inject any real life into the play. When Leonard returns to his father, the two have a final long scene together in which, while Oldfield is reading and then signing his will, Leonard confesses all, conveniently with his back to his father, so that he doesn't realise the old man has quietly died. There is then a zany scene in which Dodds and Leonard, realising Oldfield's signature is not complete, try to revive him. The mood changes between these two scenes are so drastic that any dramatic credibility is strained past breaking point.

Bond made his name with Saved and Lear - both still frequently performed. (And in Alain Francon he still has an ardent admirer; Francon has even likened him to Shakespeare.) This play, though, will do little to further his reputation. In the programme, full of grainy photos of inner city decay, Bond continues to sermonise at great length on man's inhumanity to man. But it is an appalling arrogance to get people to pay to be bludgeoned at inordinate length with the message that we are all going to hell in a handcart. Edward Bond has climbed so far up on to the moral high ground that he has lost touch with the rest of humanity.