Edward Albee by Gerry McCarthy (review)

Book Reviews 121 Similarly, though there are two brief acknowledgements of Williams's debt to Strindberg, Boxill never really grapples with the element of distortion that was always present in Williams's drama. Departures from realism are explained as "cinematic" techniques; but, though cinema was certainly a major influence on Williams's "plastic theatre". it casts very little light on the effects ofsuch plays as Camino Real, Clothes/or A Summer Hotel, The Two Character Play, Kirche, Kutchen [sic], und Kinde, or Will Mr. Merriweather Return From Memphis? And because this element is neglected, the expressionist and humorous aspects ofpJays such as Cat, Streetcar, or Menagerie are also oversimplified, and we remain boxed into the popular view of Williams as pre-eminently a writer of sensitive plays about life's losers, a sort of superior William Inge. Finally, this bias towards "realistic" character analysis also relates to the book's main weakness, a glib Freudianism that explains away Williams himself as someone with "a classic Oedipal fixation" whose plays "are fantasies in which Williams, identifying himself with his mother. finds a partner resembling himself to love as his mother loves him" (p. 36). This not only leads to such questionable comments as the opinion that "Brick's coolness towards sex may ultimately have its root in Williams's fear of caslrdtion" (p. 1I6) or the bizarre claim that "the slaying of the primeval father" is re-enacted in the cannibalizing ofStephen Venables (p. 130), but also, more insidiously, induces a patronizing attitude that diminishes Williams's art to therapy for personal neurosis. Boxill does not intend such a diminishment, of course; only an enthusiast could show so varied an acquaintance with Williams's work . Yet very little personal enthusiasm comes over in this book - except, curiously enough, when stage settings are being discussed, about which Boxill is frequently brilliant. It seems appropriate, therefore, tbat his study should end on this strong suit, with a provocative discussion of the Faulkner-like resonances of Williams's mythic "Two-River County". When all reservations have been made, in fact, this remains a valiant attempt at an almost impossible task, a clear and compact introduction to the drama of Tennessee Williams that is rather biassed in its preference for the early plays but that no teacher or scholar concerned with Williams should be without. R.B. PARKER, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO GERRY MCCARTHY. Edward Albee. London: Macmillan Ig87. Pp. xii, 168, illustrated.£18; £5.95 (PB). As if to keep pace with Albee's own irrepressible productivity, books appraising (or reappraising and documenting) his contributions to the American theatre have been appearing quite regularly over the last few years. In 1984 C.W.E. Bigsby's Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller and Edward Albee appeared as Volume Two in his magisterial Critical Introduction to Twelllieth-Century American Drama. The year 1986 saw the 122 Book Reviews publication of Richard Tyee's Edward Albee: A Bibliography and my and J. Madison Davis's Critical Essays on Edward Albee. In 1987 came Matthew C. Roudane's Understanding Edward Albee and Scott Giantvalley's Edward Albee: A Reference Guide. To these tilies we now add Gerry McCarthy's study which hails Albee as "the most significant American dramatist of his generation." Although frrst published in the United States in [987 (it was distributed in the U.K. in [986-[987 by Macmillan Educational), it is not terribly up to date. At one point McCarthy refers to Albee's adaptation of Lolita (1981) with the adverb "recently" (page I I) . He makes no mention of The Man Who Had Three Arms (1982) or the pair of Albee's one acters Finding the Sun ([983) and Walking ([984). Of cOlme there's nothing about Albee's recent, arresting new work Marriage Play (1987). McCarthy's work is a volume in the Modem Dramatists Series, the goal of which, according to editors Adele King and Bruce King, is to "include a biography, a survey of the plays, and detailed analysis of the most significant plays, along with discussion, where relevant, of the political, social. historical and theatrical context." That is a big order for McCarthy's slim volume, and he succeeds only...