Jean Genet by Jeanette L. Savona (review)

Book Reviews be a problem for the general reader. She also uses many specific productions as examples, and while her emphasis remains on the conceptual and theoretical, her discussions often approach theatrical rather than dramatic history. In this, she points out the problem of translating text into performance, if frequently slighting an explication of the nature of the problem. As with much dramatic criticism, the focus seems dual and unreconciled, both theatrical and literary. Despite generalizations in her discussions of types, her observations about the individual plays are always insightful. In her discussion of EquIls. for example, she argues persuasively that the play may suggest a new mode of ritual theater. The nature of the masks in this work. she argues, translates "an inner conflict into a visual emblem, a ritual," literalizing the anthropomorphic nature of the horses and their representation ofa moralistic and repressive human, not animal, element. The masking projects a psychological state and elevates it to the stature of individual tragedy (85-88). Usefully illustrated, Masks in Modern Drama also provides an appendix of production stills. This, along with a production chronology and an exhaustive bibliography, gives (unher evidence of the admirable scholarship of the study. This is a valuable work for anyone with an interest in modernist theory and practice, particularly as manifested in drama and theatre. RODNEY SIMARD, CALIFORNIA STATE COLLEGE, BAKERSFIELD JEANETTE L. SAVONA. Jean Gellet. New York: Grove Press 1984. pp. 180, illustrated. $12·50. The plays of Jean Genet are remarkable in many ways, not least in the extremism of the responses they tend to elicit. Both in the reviews that follow their perfonnances, which routinely register protests against Genet's "ugly obsessions", and in the critical treatment they receive years or even decades later, in which Genet is charged not so much with blatant prurience as with its literary equivalent, lack of clarity - the note of hysteria is unmistakable. The refreshing absence of this note in Jeanette Savona's new book on Genet is the first sign of its excellence. This is not merely a fine introductory volume (the definition its context imparts - it is another in the massive series on Modem Dramatists currently being brought out by Grove Press), but one of the finest critical studies ofGenet's drama to dafe. Savona has managed to use the form imposed by the editors ofthe series not only to assess the criticaJ tradition on Genet (and she has done this with great tact and clarity, finding and highlighting the best in all previous studies), but also to suggest several extremely promising new approaches to this body of work. Savona's special strengths as a reader of Genet are reflected even in the title of the opening chapter. The obligatory "Biography and other background" is prefaced by the words "Genet's Theatre." ]t is primarily as a maker of theatrical images and a constructor of dramatic messages that Genet appears in these pages, not (as in so many Book Reviews previous studies), as a nihilistic philosopher, a perverted prophet, a social outcast, an existential puzzle, or a saint. Savona's short discussion of these previous characterizations , especially Sartre's, in a section entitled "Problems of a legendary life," is an examplary exercise in reasonableness and demystification, in which she exposes critical problematizing of such issues as homosexuality, for instance, as products of literalism, of a failure to attend to their poetic manifestations and theatrical effects. Savona's handling of the production history of Genet's plays is another example of how she both fulfills and goes beyond the requirements ofa typical introduction. Besides . providing updated and (to most English spealdng readers) new infonnation about European productions of the plays, she makes the relevance ofsuch infonnation clear in her actual analyses ofthe plays. These analyses, while incorporating lucid summaries of traditional thematic readings of the plays (I know of no better discussion of the much-treated illusion and reality theme in The Balcony) relate these themes to Genet's theatrical practice (or, more precisely, to the theatrical practice his texts enjoin on producers). That is, Savona explores the ·special sort of theatrical semlosis implicit in Genet's play-texts, which she fonnulates as follows...