The Fool (play)

The Spectator's Kenneth Hurren criticized the play and the performance after the Royal Court Theatre premiere, arguing that the work consists of two different plays that "do not so much blend with as disappear into each other" and saying that Courtenay "has a hard time with Clare".[7]

In a 2001 article for The New York Times, Benedict Nightingale described The Fool as "moving".[8] In 2006, Mark Ravenhill praised the boxing match as one of Bond's "brilliant images".[9] Elizabeth Davis of Kilburn Times wrote, after seeing the 2010 performance directed by Bond, that "the play has powerful moments but the production was overly long (at 2hr 45mins) and, at times, as po-faced as the pompous vicar. Nevertheless, Bond, as ever, creates a memorable and thought-provoking evening."[10] In the same year, Ravenhill lauded the play as a "brilliant [...] landmark" work and wrote, "There is no play that more acutely captures the experience of being a writer who is happily snatched up by London literary circles and then just as hastily dispatched".[11]

Michael Billington of The Guardian called The Fool "a fine play" in a 2010 review of a different play.[12] Lyn Gardner described it as "a very fine play about Clare" in the same paper.[13] Playwright Nicholas Wright referred to it as a "great play".[14] Pamela McCallum wrote in 2016 that the play "represents a high point of post-war British drama and perhaps can be taken as a site of division between generations in theatre. The following generation—Churchill, Ravenhill, Kane, and Butterworth—foreground, in very different ways, the psychological distortions and devastating brutalities of the contemporary world".[15]

The Fool won Best Play of 1976 in the Plays and Players London Critics Award.[16]

• BBC News on the Edward Bond Season 2010
• Details of original production in 1975