The Onstage Christ: Studies in the Persistence of a Theme by John Ditsky (review)

Book Reviews 437 against Itself, Jews, Actors, and The Survivors of Hiroshima," the book disappoints and confounds the reader. It seems unfair to devote a few paragraphs apiece to such modern masters as Chekhov, Pirandello, Brecht, and Beckett, and their disgust with theatre practice. (The brevity of this review stands equally unfair.) But Barish eventually recognizes that these playwrights' assaults upon their respective theatres serve to improve the state of the art. As for the prejudicial comparison to anti-Semitism, I remain lost, a wandering Jew myself, in an otherwise informative if not breathtakingly original book. Without a passionate thesis of its own, instead of its selective chronology of theatrical antagonism, The Antitheatrical Prejudice falters - and particularly so in regard to modern drama. EILEEN FISCHER, KINGSBOROUGH COLLEGE, CUNY JOHN DITSKY. The Onstage Christ: Studies in the Persistence0/a Theme. Totowa, N.].: Barnes & Noble 1980. Pp. 188. The symbol hunting that is so much a part of literary criticism is particularly prominent among those Christian scholars who often find themselves under siege for imputing Christian identifications to characters displaying only tenuous resemblances to Christ. The Christian connection in several of Ditsky's chosen Christ figures is similarly .speculative. yet Ditsky's consistent avoidances of both dogmatism and deductive thinking combine to make The Onstage Christ an intelligent and provocative book. There are thirteen chapters in Ditsky's study, each devoted to one play by a major figure in modem drama, including Ibsen, Shaw, Synge, Brecht, Eliot, O'Neill, Osborne, Williams, Pinter, Albee, Arden, and Whiting. In some cases, the Christ image is clearly an essential component of the text, as with Saint Thomas aBecket in Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral. In others, the identification of a central character with Christ has become an established part of the criticism of that play, as with Albee's The Zoo Story, O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, Ibsen's The Wild Duck, and Williams's Orpheus Descending. Ditsky is most illuminating, however, when he approaches plays which are not usually considered to have Christian associations or those in which the Christian elements have been identified but not extensively explored. He suggests, for example, that Shaw's Major Barbara is a transfigured Christ, achieving divine afflatus through the play's "glorious climax of commitment." In her role as soul saver, the Salvation Army officer transcends Shaw's disdainful Christianity to unite with the Dionysian spirit of Andrew Undershaft. According to Ditsky's interpretation of Strindberg's The Father, the Captain is a "paranoid Christ" who "has long been ready to climb upon the nearest cross" and who, in the final tableau, assumes the posture ofChrist in the Pieta. The critic sees the last scene as a Biblical parody that replaces the rule of God the Father with that of the Virgin Mother. The Christ in Ditsky's study is protean: whereas Major Barbara represents the transcendent Christ and The Father stands for the paranoid Christ, Azdak in Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle is a "judging Jesus," Musgrave in Arden's Serjeant Book Reviews Musgrave's Dance is a "Eucharistic Christ," and Christy Mahon in Synge's The Playboy of the Western World is a parodic Christ in a play that preaches a "savage sennon." Pinter's "Christ of Complicity" is a particularly intriguing avatar, for though Ditsky does not claim that Stanley in The Birthday Party is a redeemer, he does draw parallels between his suffering and that of Jesus in the Passion, as he does also in treating Grandier in Whiting'5 The Devils. The most unusual contender for Christ status, however, is Osborne's Jimmy Porter (Look Back in Anger), for whom Ditsky claims only secular Christ status, calling him an "existential hero-in-the-making," a "social saviour" who improves on the Biblical Christ. Despite such liberal interpretations of the onstage Christ, Ditsky's study is almost uniformly credible, for it combines dose textual reading with tempered analysis that resists extravagant claims. Ditsky himself acknowledges that his interpretation of these plays offers only one possible approach to them. Yet he so skillfully toes the line between speculation and authority that the result is an appealing study of significant critical worth. Perhaps...