plays of protagonists who are either virtuous or evil, lacking complexity. Innes dubbed Restoration the "only play to rise above this simplification in the recent phase of Bond's career". Frank Rich of The New York Times also panned Summer in 1983 as "pallid and inept", and "torpid [...] As characters, Xenia and Marthe do not have the depth that might relieve some of the tedium. Mr. Bond's deterministic view of society reduces them to symbols". The Woman was the first contemporary play performed in the recently opened Olivier auditorium and the production was acclaimed as an aesthetic success, especially for its innovative use of the huge open stage. David L. Hirst wrote that in the play Bond "skilfully reworks The Trojan Women so as to cast the image of that society into the present and inform contemporary political opinion." Adam Thorpe called the play "magnificent" in 2006. However, Bond's working relationships as a director with both the National Theatre and the Royal Court were highly conflicted. The theatres and their actors accused him of being authoritarian and abstract in his direction and unrealistic in his production requirements, and Bond complained undiplomatically about their lack of artistic engagement and had crude rows both with some reluctant actors and theatre managers. He felt that British theatre had no understanding of his intention to revitalise modern drama and could no longer fulfil his artistic demands. With his notoriously uncompromising attitude, Bond gained the reputation of a "difficult author", which contributed to keeping him away from the major English stages. During the mid-1980s, Peter Hall at the National Theatre repeatedly refused to allow him to direct his new play Human Cannon, written for Yvonne Bryceland and the wide stage of the Olivier. Richard Boon described Human Cannon as "very good". In 1985, he attempted to direct his War Plays at the RSC, accepting very bad working conditions, but left the rehearsals before the premiere after disastrous sessions, and then violently criticized the production and the theatre. Max Stafford-Clark has written that with the Barbican production of The War Plays, Bond "reduced a talented cast into a stumbling and incoherent shambles of walking wounded. Edward Bond is simply the most difficult person I have worked with in 40 years." He then decided not to allow his plays to be premiered in London by institutional theatres without proper working conditions. He only agreed to return to