Starry starry night

Saved, by British playwright Edward Bond, created a furore when it was staged in 1965 at the Royal Court Theatre. Most controversial of all was a scene in which a baby is stoned to death, which Bond intended as a metaphor for the moral disintegration of modern life. Eileen Walsh, who stars in a new production of Saved at the Peacock – and who previously played at the Abbey in productions such as Portia Coughlan and Aeriel as well as in films such as The Magdalene Sisters and When Brendan Met Trudy – believes that particular scene and this play still have the capacity to shock today. And to be just as relevant.

“We were just talking about that very subject today during rehearsals,” she says, speaking just before the play opened. “Take, for example, that recent case about the mum and her sister who videotaped their own two little kids fighting, and encouraged a two-year-old boy to hit a three-year old girl, vicious stuff. Yet to me the scene in Saved that shocked people in the ‘60s – and got this play banned and the Royal Court had to become a private members’ club to show it – still shocks because it comes so organically, as though its meant to happen and that this is just human behaviour.“
Even so, the over-arching subject matter of is one that should be close to the experience of many readers of Hot Press. Namely, it is said to be “a compelling story of a group of young people and their search for love and belonging in a world of casual sex and random violence.”
And although the play is set on a council estate in South London, it doesn’t take a great leap of imagination to be able to transplant to Irish locations such as Dublin, Limerick or Galway battle cries such as “Whass ‘appening to us? Nothin’ left but rows. Day in, day out. Fightin’ with knives.”
“But our job is to make it all resonate today,” Eileen suggests. “Certainly for me to feel something I have to have experienced it on some level in some kind of way. So to me this play has huge echoes in terms of relationships, love, respect. And anyone can relate to my character Pam. She is out to experience life, have fun, have what she would like for herself when it comes to sex, relationships, a happy life. And, fundamentally, to escape what her mother and father are.”
Which is?
“They are in a seemingly unhappy relationship, they don’t speak and it is a very angry house Pam lives in,” Eileen explains. “So she tries to fight against that. Although, as can so often happen, no matter how hard you fight such circumstances you end up coming back to what you know. And, though I hate saying this, part of me believes that is what happens to us. We do fight against it, sometimes all our lives but can’t help coming back to what made you what you are. Yet the more hopeful part of me believes this life-long struggle is more two steps forward and one step back.”
But isn’t redemption – two steps forward, one step back or not – the ultimate goal of Bond for his characters in a play that is, after all, called Saved?
“It is,” Eileen agrees. “And he has a great line in terms of describing the play. He says he finds it ‘hopelessly optimistic’ and that says it all for me. And what’s really great about Saved to me is that it’s about people who don’t have a huge amount in life but survive by grasping at straws. As in day-to-day existence becomes a lifetime lived in a day because you feel that’s all you have. And you do anything to manage, to get by, to mentally survive and to, in the end to at least try to be saved.”
That’s also why, in the end, Eileen Walsh insists that working in Saved is ultimately redemptive for her as an actor.
“It is, absolutely, because the play takes you through some kind of journey and you are searching for some kind of light. But in that context smaller goals become achievable and that, in itself, is enough to save your soul.”
Saved runs from May 1-26 at the Peacock Theatre.