Gambit: Howard Barker Special Issue ed. by Tony Dunn (review)

Book Reviews is, however, strictly for the beginner, as Self so clearly states in his introductory comments. I would therefore have no hesitation whatsoever in recommending it to my own students. The interrelationship of dramatic activity in the various media is a fascinating subject. one which this journal has taken up in a recent special issue. Selfs little volume will serve a nice function in helping students understand some of the basics. especially those among us with a taste for things British. ENOCH DRATER, THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN TONY DUNN . ed. Gambit: Howard Barker Speciallsslte, Vol. n. No. 41. London: John Calder Ltd. 1984. Pp. 143, illustrated. £2.50 (PB). For ajoumal with the name "Gambit," this issue devoted to Howard Barker doesn't open well. The editorial leads off with a classic piece ofawkward sloganeering: "Since, in our culture, public hypervaluation of minimal skills is now routine, those trained in discrimination must announce very loudly where the real talent still is;" and manages to top that with the closing sentence: "Such prolific simultaneity . . . is an unmistakable declaration that language in public has other functions than organised mendacity." Such pseudo-scientific jargon smacks of sociology texts that have too little to say; or the apparatchik language "up with which" legend has it, Churchill "would not put"; and, with it tendency towards hyperbole and obfuscation does little to lead us to expect a lucid appreciation of Barker's work. More. The editorial also contained the statement, in the context of Barker's feminism: "If he's a misanthrope, he's misanthropic to both sexes." This further undennined my confidence in the Issue. Criticism deals in part, and at some important level, with language and meaning. If the editors do not know that misanthrope implies a hater of Humanity in general, not just men in particular, how far can we rely upon their judgements ofan artist whose major tool is language? Even though they have been "trained in discrimination." Forsooth! I don't doubt the earnestness and good intentions of the editors in their desire to introduce a deserving socialist playwright to a larger audience. But that very earnestness points up a problem with self-conscious criticism - that of objectivity and voice - and this tends to run through the Issue. The major contributor is the editor, Tony Dunn, who has an interview with Barker, and then a substantial essay in which he works his way through five of Barker's plays, concluding that "to elucidate their deep structures has demanded three different modes of critical analysis, the conceptual, the psychoanalytic, and the gestural" (p.90). And summing up with: "We can, however, be confident that Howard Barker's choices will continue to be informed by the acute political intelligence of his work to date" (P.90). It is this voice which somehow makes the Issue hard work and less than engaging: a detennined earnestness leading to a less than original conclusion. All of this based upon the premise that here is a socialist playwright who ought to be listened to for that very reason. But is it quite enough, oreven a good premise on which to base criticism? A problem with "committed" criticism is that it will attempt Book Reviews to explain a work from too limited a perspective, and in doing so loses sight of the work itself. We may be left with an explanation of where a piece of theatre fits inro a certain scheme of things - e.g. Marxist, semiological - but we gailliittle sense of what it is as theatre. This critical problem is especially acute with Barker who, though self-avowedly a Socialist, has found almost as little acceptance from the British Left as from the Right. Some of the reason far this comes through in the interview Dunn conducts (though even more in an earlier interview with Simon Trussler in Theatre Quarterly. Vol. X, No. 40, 1981), and it seems to be a function not so much ofBarker's theatrical instinct, but ofrus chosen posture: "Any club that would have me I wouldn't want to join"; to quote a Marxist aphorism (Groucho in this instance). Barker allows that he would like to receive acclaim forms work...