Contradictory Characters: An Interpretation of the Modern Theatre by Albert Bermel (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 351 intentional deception, but it is nontheless cruel for all that. If I have dealt at length with what seem to me limitations in Dr. Goodlad's book, I hope I shall not have seemed unduly critical. Dr. Goodlad offers a prolegomenon, but he goes a good deal further and, in doing so, he should stimulate discussion as to the nature of popular drama, discussion which will be the better informed for what he has done. PETER DAVISON St. David's University College, Lampeter CONTRADICTORY CHARACTERS: AN INTERPRETATION OF THE MODERN THEATRE, by Albert Bermel. New York: E. P. Dutton Inc., 1973. xiv & 298 pp. $5.95. Albert Bermel's Contradictory Characters is a reinterpretation of fifteen modern classics stressing their artistic unity rather than any political, social or biographical merit. For Bermel, modern theatre is a visual enactment of the protagonist's personal torments; supporting characters and stage action are analogous to that inner struggle. This premise applies as well to Giraudoux and Pinter as to Shaw and Ibsen: political rhetoric tells us little about the artistry these playwrights employed. Of course, the premise could be said to apply equally well to ancient plays. Antigone, King Lear, Hamlet, even Watch on The Rhine or Golden Boy (in which Joe Bonaparte says to his father: "Why did you come here? You sit there like my conscience") - all provide plots that, on one level, dramatize facets of the protagonist's hopes and fears. But Bermel proceeds further by suggesting new metaphors, new idioms in which to stage the plays. He rejects stale preconceptions and begins anew by peeling through the psychological situations that underlie the dialogue. Each essay emphasizes character struggle, whether it is against self, family, environment or illusion, and each essay is a scenario for fresh stage interpretations. Bermel is concerned about how Rubek and Irene should look onstage as they are being buried by the avalanche in When We Dead A waken. He spends much of his chapter on Long Day's Journey Into Night making a case for the playas an artistic construct and not merely an historical record of the author's family problems. With A Slight Ache, Bermel hopes to give directors clues to the symbolic inner crisis, clues from which to mount a new production. The questions he poses do not limit the richness of the plays but add new dimensions to their stage lives. In addition, Bermel employs his ironic sense of humor to shake up our preconceptions about what one should expect from Shaw, Brecht, and Ibsen. How refreshing to hear him compare Shen Te in Good Woman of Setzuan to Sky Masterson in Frank Loesser's Guys and Dolls singing "My Time of Day." The piece de resistance is his calling Aristotle's theory of purgation a "dramatic laxative." "In most of the chapters I feel as if I could start all over again," says Bermel in his "Deductions," "and re-examine the plays from new vantage points and with new emphases, rather as a director might keep restaging a play and rediscovering it." Among the plays he is rediscovering - Ghosts, The 352 BOOK REVIEWS Father, St. Joan, The Dutchman, Krapp's Last Tape - Bermel has found that amalgam of timelessness and symbolic action, character and conflict, that defines great theatre. This is dramatic criticism for scholar and theatre worker alike; both will find it provocative and rewarding. GARY BLAKE Baruch College JEAN ANOUILH: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY, by Kathleen White Kelly. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1973. viii & 132 pp. $5.00. As the writer of thirty-two plays, countless articles, adaptations, film scenarios , and ballet scripts, reflecting in various ways forty-three years during which France withstood a depression, a traumatic defeat, an occupation, a political purge, and numerous governments including De Gaulle's, Jean Anouilh is a giant of the French stage. Besides, although seemingly as phlegmatic as a boulevardier, Anouilh is a deceptively complex, Protean moralist. Therefore, compiling an annotated bibliography on him takes considerable patience and knowledge. The chief value of Mrs. Kelly's book lies in three chapters: chapter three, which lists full length studies: chapter four on "Shorter Studies of Anouilh" (although the title is...