A Window

A room in a high rise flat. The window overlooks the city street.

A woman reads a story in a newspaper. It shatters her world. Her hopes for herself and the child she is carrying turn to fear. She tries to explain to her partner. He will not listen: “That kid’s a curse on me. Get rid of it or I’m out.”

Years later, her partner has long since vanished and the ‘kid’ is a young man. He takes great risks to help his mother but fails – she will destroy herself. When he is finally left alone he meets his lost father in a startling confrontation. It leads to a radiant climax in which the young man seems to meet himself. He turns to the window and for him the city beyond it and his own life are changed.

A remarkable insight into the tangled problems of being human in an inhuman world – of the relationship between the individual and the community, between delusion and reality, choice and coercion – A Window is sometimes disturbing but always deeply compassionate.

Edward Bond is internationally known as one of the world’s greatest playwrights. His 45 plays have been staged by the RSC, The National Theatre, The Nationale Theatre De la Colline, and in some 60 countries. This is his seventh Big Brum play written especially for the young people of Birmingham and the West Midlands.