People

de Edward Bond

Postern lies on the ground, his shirt drenched in blood when Lambeth arrives. She is carrying a sack and, rejecting his soiled shirt, begins to search the rest of his clothes to find something that she can sell. The elderly and emaciated Margerson desperately recounts the story of an aborted execution. He continues to tell it in his sleep. Lambeth tries to get the overcoat off Postern, who falls in and out of terrified consciousness. And Someone arrives, knowing neither his past nor his identity, searching for a clue in the wasteland. 'People' is the fourth play in Bond's 'The Paris Pentad' (originally called 'The Colline Tetralogy'), preceded by 'Coffee', 'The Crime of the Twenty-First Century', and 'Born', and followed by 'Innocence'.