[In] The Activists Papers (published with, and constituting, the author informs us, an introduction to his play The Worlds) [Bond] entreats: 'We mustn't treat personal dramas which are only a consequence of political dramas as if they were themselves full political dramas.' It is indeed a fundamental axiom of the theories set out by Bond in The Activists Papers that actions which derive from a private source cannot properly be held to demonstrate or represent political truth. For Bond the individual is a valid dramatic focus only when his individuality is transcended by the nature and pattern of the wider generality it represents.

In Bond's own play The Worlds …, individuality is not so much transcended as submerged by the rigidity with which the author relates the dramatic tools at his disposal to an implacable political purpose. Essentially the play portrays the confrontation between the management and workers...