Levitating the Pentagon: Evolutions in the American Theatre of the Vietnam War Era by J.W. Fenn (review)

Book Reviews 537 script was completed and submitted but was never broadcast. We also learn the following new facts: Shaffer would like to revise Black Comedy into two acts and plans to adapt White Liars for television or cinema; Shaffer's most recent play, Whom Do I Have the Honour ofAddressing? (1989), written for radio, may soon be reworked as a stage or television drama; and Shaffer has nearly finished a mystery drama that he has been toying with for the past ten years, featuring three plots running simultaneously on stage. Gianakaris concludes the book with a chronology of premieres of Shaffer's plays, a bibliography of Shaffer's works, and a partial listing of secondary sources. Shaffer's growing prominence in contemporary international theatre circles warrants another study of his plays, especially appropriate here because of new material on Yonadab and Lettice & Lovage. GENE A. PLUNKA, MEMPHIS STATE UNIVERSITY lW. FENN. Levitating the Pentagon: Evolutions in the American Theatre ofthe Vietnam War Era. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992 . Pp. 289· $37.50. Abbie Hoffman would have urged readers, especially students, to steal this book. Levitating the Pentagon examines the dramatic texts and theatrical productions of the Vietnam War years and provides very useful appendices for readers too young to remember Vietnam or American theatre history in the sixties and seventies. "The American theatre of the 1960s and 1970s," J.W. Fenn writes, "was extremely dynamic for several reasons: all derive from the circumstance that theatre, as Shakespeare suggests, interprets and enhances the ideas, the turmoil, and the passions of the world it reflects." In his first chapter, "A Culture under Stress," Fenn outlines the spiritual , social, political, and psychological problems of the period. Each subsequent chapter traces theatre's innovative responses to America's tensions and angst. Chapter Two, "The Experimental Theatre," notes the emergence of experimental drama groups: The Open Theatre, The Living. Theatre, and The Performance Group. Fenn discusses Jack Gelber's The Connection, Megan Terry's Viet Rock, and Hair in detail. In the third chapter, "The Radical Theatre," the dramatic focus on politics intensifies . Fenn describes some of the theatrical techniques of The San Francisco Mime Troupe, The Bread and Puppet Theatre, and Teatro Campesino. Fenn looks at what he calls "The Documentary Theatre" in the fourth chapter. Here, he synopsizes tribunal plays such as The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, Inquest, and Pueblo. Then Fenn turns to "The Theatre of Abstraction" - his problematic term - in the next chapter where he analyzes the failure of American cultural mythology through extensive discussions of Robert Lowell's dramatic trilogy, Arthur Kopit's Indians, Jules Feiffer's plays, and Joseph Heller's We Bombed in New Haven. When the book's emphasis shifts to experience based plays directly about Vietnam, Fenn writes with greater enthusiasm. He divides the war dramas into three categories: plays of initiation, plays of experience, and plays of homecoming. Young students in Book Reviews America and elsewhere will find these chapters valuable for their descriptive plot summaries . Other readers will feel reminded and refreshed, not overwhelmed, by Fenn's earnest, appreciative, and not very critical approach. In these war chapters Fenn deals with David Rabe's initiation plays The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and Streamers , H. Wesley Balk's experience adaptation The Dramatization of 365 Days, along with Amlin Gray's How I Got That Story, and John DiFusco's Tracers. As for homecoming dramas, Fenn includes Rabe's Sticks and Bones, Adrienne Kennedy's An Evening with Dead Essex and Tom Cole's Medal ofHonor Rag, as well as Ronald Ribman 's The Burial of Esposito, Terence McNally's Bringing It All Back Home, and Emily Mann's Still Life. The book's epilogue asks, "Did the theatre merely preach to the converted? Or did it rally disciples to the cause?" Fern waffles and concludes, "The theatre has neither the mandate nor the capability to change the world, nor should it try." Dear, departed Abbie Hoffman.would disagree. In moments of hope - rare in these gloomy nineties so do I. Long live the sixties and seventies in dramatic words and theatrical deeds. EILEEN FISCHER, NEW YORK CITY TECHNICAL COLLEGE OF CUNY...