In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Book Reviews just language; it extends far beyond the linguistic models which serve as a point of departure in exploring it. For this reason, every one ofthese theories has come up against onc impasse after another. Does this phenomenon constitute failure? By no means. Among the many books and articles dealing with the theatre, Elam's book has a special place, since it is the first attempt to achieve a synthesis of all previous and current research on the theatre, covering all its aspects. Forthat very reason,it is essential reading (see, for example, the extensive bibliography), a valuable reference tool, and an excellent, up-to-date account of all of the work in this field. This book succeeds where L' Un;vers du thidtre (Girard, Rigaud, Ouellet, PUF) failed. JOSETTE rtRAL, UNIVERSITt DU QutBEC - MONTREAL Translated by Barbara Kerslake JAMES KNOWLSON (ed.). Samuel Beckett: Krapp's Last Tape (Theatre Workbook 1). London: Brutus Books 1980. pp. 176, illustrated. James Knowlson's little book on Krapp's Last Tape is the first number of a projected series devoted to Beckett's individual dramatic works. The intention is to compile reviews by academic and drama critics with "first-hand material from directors, actors, and set or lighting designers."Judging from this initial offering, the intention has been earried through; the result is a concise and handsome handbook for students thinking about Beckett's one-aeter for the first time. The guidebook will also serve as arefresher course for specialists in the field, though no doubt they have encountered elsewhere the major portion ofthe essays and interviews collected here. Still, as with othercasebooks, notably Ruby Cohn's on Waiting/or Godot, it is always convenient to have at hand a compilation of secondary source material devoted to one play bound so attractively in a single volume. Most helpful in Knowlson's theater workbook are the excellent translations of interviews conducted originally in Gennan or French. These give English-speaking students of Beckett access to highly suggestive reactions to the productions ofhis plays in Paris andBerlin, thus adding to the international flavor ofBeckettcriticism previously produced by Knowlson, John Pilling, and others in the Journal of Beckett Studies sponsored by John Calder. The rich production history of Krapp's Last Tape in New York, London, Paris, Berlin, and San Francisco has engaged the fonnidable talents of actors and directors on both sides of the Atlantic, fostering individual modes of interpretation which bear wimess to the play's status as a modem classic. Pierre Chabert's comments on "Samuel Beckett as Director" (translated by M.A. Bonney and the editor) seem to this reviewer the most trenchant statement in this volume concerning the play's essential integrity. The article recounts Chabert's experience as an actor working with Beckett at the TMltre d'Ors.y, Petite salle, in April '975. Chabert is especially sensitive to Beckett's "theatrical poetic," how the "actual staging of the play is always written into his texts." In acting Krapp under Beckett's direction, Chabert came to realize bow "speech is never dissociated from space or from the concrete language of the stage. Speech is never conceived as being separate from gesture, movement, place, physical position and bodily posture." Krapp's Last Tape is first Book Reviews presented to us through an image, "3 trifle unreal, abstracted from time and space, providing at the outset the essential stage structure of the play where everything is eoacted within this relationship. this alternation between a voice, unearthed from the past ... and a character whom this distant voice strikes with great force." Chabert has a real understanding of what is new about Krapp's Last Tape and how it relates to the whole question of Beckett's late style in the theater. As such, his commentary is the centerpiece of Knowlson's edition, for it strikes at the basic problem of both production and acting in a play whose real essence is the drama of words themselves:"how can a play which is based on the act oflistening be made to work in the theatre'! How can the act of listening be dramatized?" Knowlson'5 edition goes a long way in providing some...

pdf

Share