Len also endures Pam’s insults rather than take a firm stand, for example, when she berates him about looking after a child that she claims isn’t his – “I don’t understan’ yer. They take time to adapt to the new situation, and most of them react in a rather conventional way; and although each one’s attitude may be designed to impress the others, they do not totally hide the concern they feel. On the other hand, the play interested the radicals; John Elsom, writing in his book Post War British Theatre Criticism, appreciated “the realism of Bond’s writing, his superb evocation of a flat, arid, hopeless and deprived social life in South London [which] compelled everybody who saw the play to recognise that atrocities were not confined to fascist camps… but took place in supposedly civilised countries as well”. It’s widely believed that this particular work played a decisive role in the battle against stage censorship, because of its thematic power and skilful writing and construction; yet the censor’s demands, had they been met, would have reduced the play to an emasculated wreck – a mere series of unconnected scenes without any “bite”.

Violence is apparently the key to understanding Saved yet the lead character is incapable of aggression. Bond confronts his audience with not only a crime but a study of the repercussions of that crime in a flawed societal milieu. When he started writing Saved, Bond didn't intend the baby to die: the young men were merely going to "set fire to something in a park. The answer appears to be the consequences to the intervention (Sanderson’s last point), whatever Len imagined them to be, outweighed the benefits of saving his own flesh and blood. This gradual escalation is evident in the play, beginning with Pete’s suggestion to “Pull their ‘air” (Bond 65) which goes through a series of transformations until a stone is produced and Pete suggests “Less see yer chuck that” (69).

The shock of the moment when the child is killed is imbued with the adrenalin of the perpetrators, but later, the cold responses from central characters indicate an eerie moral deficiency.

when Fred swears, because you don’t swear in front of children; Mike tells Pete “don’t stick your ugly mug in its face!The first suggestion of violence, which comes in a scene crammed with sexual banter and laddish teasing, concerns a horrific incident but which we don’t see on stage, it’s only reported. Sanderson points out that there are common traits to situations where people fail to act, namely, “confusion about what was happening, a lack of a sense of personal responsibility, misperception of social norms, and fear of consequences” (8). Castillo, there is an engaging analysis of the animal imagery in Saved which links to the previous remark on cavemen. Of these four, we may dismiss numbers one (confusion) and three (social norms) without hesitation as they do not apply to Len’s situation.

This observation leads to a more profound finding by Sanderson, namely that “The question of why some people act badly and others don’t is not really about good and bad people. However, the best example comes when Harry explains to Len how killing can be seen in a positive light – “Yer never killed yer man.On a more serious note, two children are killed in the story which goes directly against the 6 th commandment of ‘thou shalt not kill. However, the really crushing poverty depicted in the play is the poverty of ethics as evidenced by exceptionally poor parenting skills.

The tragic scene highlights the level of neglect and how the ills of society fall hard upon a defenceless child without their natural protector of a loving parent. But what Bond exposes in Saved is our capacity to deny the violence in human nature – the kind of violence Bond saw evidence of in Coventry just a few years ago, when he heard a parent say to a child: "If you don't shut up, I'll kill you. Initially, Saved was denied a license by the Lord Chamberlain’s Office, who deemed it unfit for public consumption and The Royal Court was prosecuted when it tried to find a loophole. When Len suggests that something needs to be done about caring for the baby, Pam responds "Put it on the council", i.The use of bystander effect theory shows, to begin, that Len is our focal point rather than the gang of barbaric men. We knew the play was going to be controversial, but one perhaps expected a more considered reaction.