At the end of Edward Bond's impressive new play The Woman there is blood on the stage and the courts and temples of capitalism have begun to crumble. The Dark Man, a nameless runaway cripple, his skin blackened by a life of slavery in the silver mines, has killed the all but nameless Heros. Who is Heros? The richest and most handsome man in Athens, imperial centre built of silver from those mines. The play is political allegory and would be incoherent in any other terms. But Bond is too perceptive to present the issues in black and white—or rather silver and black—and the complexity of image and ideal is the work's great strength. But this makes it difficult—scarcely accessible to the common people it champions….

The Woman has a Timon-like split structure, divided between war and peace, culture and nature, blindness and vision...