The Sea is a 1973 play by Edward Bond. It is a comedy set in a small seaside village in rural East Anglia during the Edwardian period and draws from some of the themes of Shakespeare's The Tempest. It was well-received by critics.

Set in 1907, the play begins with a tempestuous storm in which a well-known and loved member of the community drowns. It then explores the reactions of the villagers and the attempts by two young lovers to break away from the constraints of the hierarchical, and sometimes irrational, society.

At the same time, the town's draper struggles with abuse and bullying from the town's "First Lady", Mrs. Rafi. Believing that aliens from another planet have arrived to invade the city, he had refused to help the drowning man's friend's attempts to save him and eventually goes stark raving mad.

The play was originally produced at the Royal Court Theatre on 22 May 1973, directed by William Gaskill.

In 1991 it was produced by the National Theatre, directed by Sam Mendes, with Judi Dench as Mrs. Rafi and Ken Stott as Hatch. In 2000, Sean Holmes directed a production at The Minerva Theatre Chichester, with Susan Engel as Mrs. Rafi and Michael Gould as Hatch. In 2008, Jonathan Kent produced the play at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, with Eileen Atkins as Mrs. Rafi and David Haig as Hatch. This production was reviewed positively in Evening Standard. It was also produced by the 1812 Theatre Company at Helmsley Arts Centre in Helmsley, Yorkshire in 2009. It was produced by Eva Holmes in 2014, with Fiona Reid's performance as Louise Rafi highly praised in The Buffalo News and Toronto Star.

In 2007, in a New York production Off-Broadway, The Actors Company Theatre (TACT) staged the play.

Ann Marie Demling wrote in 1983 that The Sea enjoyed popular and critical acclaim, and that in the play, Bond "most clearly and articulately expresses a vision that was only suggested in The Pope's Wedding and Saved." Lawrence MacDonald praised the dynamic between Carson and Hatch, as well as the character of Evens. However, MacDonald said that the play's eight scenes "don't quite add up to a total, self cementing structure" and derided the scenes "between Willy Carson and Rose Jones. They come across as fiat and banal concessions to the boy meets girl syndrome."

Ian Shuttleworth wrote for the Financial Times, "His comedy is frequently as broad as a 1970s television sitcom, and his passages of more profound comment tend to interrupt this silliness obtrusively rather than to sneak in under its Trojan-horse cover. [...] The Sea constantly declares that it has depths, but Bond never summons the resolve to trawl them properly". Colin Dabkowski of The Buffalo News wrote, "For this particularly bleak brand of existentialist drama to sit side-by-side with such finely calibrated mannerist comedy is unusual but often thrilling. [...] by placing haunting reflections on the experience of life in a dead-end seaside town in such proximity to slapstick comedy, Bond seems to be making a statement on the power of theater as an antidote to the void, or at least a distraction from it." Chicago Tribune's Sid Smith billed The Sea in 1994 as a "dense, erratic, compelling piece of theater", as well as "a feast of acting opportunity and emotional depths" that "gracefully wends back and forth between [tragedy and comedy]", but Smith criticized some of the acting in the Cypress Group performance he attended.