Edward Bond's version of Lear's story embraces myth, superstition and reality to reveal the endemic violence of a rancorous society. Setting his play around the symbolic building of a great wall, Bond exposes false morality as the source of the aggressive tension which may ultimately destroy society. In a play where blindness becomes a dramatic metaphor for insight, Bond has made it yet more gruesome than Shakespeare by stripping the scene of passion and framing it in a cool medical context." (The Times)