John Arden and Margaretta D'Arcy: A Casebook ed. by Jonathan Wike (review)

Book Reviews larly fierce in writers and contempt, disdain. These are the characteristics of the middle aged writer.' As Hare has moved towards middle age, so his own 'jealousy' has become more evident - of John Osborne for writing Look Back in Anger after which theatre was never the same; of right-wing writers who can condemn people to the miserable inadequacies of their own lives." Still more distressing is the fact that Hamden has little sense of how the plays work on stage and so cannot convey the strategies of performance to which Hare himself is so attuned. Judy Oliva's David Hare (Ann Arbor 1990) - absenl from Ihe bibliography -: might have pointed ways to that. Beyond the actors' sub-text or the colloquy of lights, sets, pacing. Hare consciously manipulates "what happens between the stage and the audience," As he said (Cambridge Leclure 1978), "A play is in the air." ANTHONY JENKINS, UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA . JONATHA N WIKE, ed. John Arden and Margaretra D'Arcy:A Casebook. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities Vol. 1355; Casebooks on Modem Dramatists Vol. 14. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1995. Pp. 264. $42,00 In trying to evaluate the work of John Arden and Margaretta D'Arcy, critics face challenges posed by diff~rences in earlier appraisals and developments in Arden and D'Arcy's writing. First, although the original production of Serjeanr Musgrave's Dance was a flop, the play is generally recognized as a mode;m classic. Next, Arden and D'Arcy began collaborating on plays that were more stridently political and explored "popular" theatrical conventions. As a result. they alienated themselves from critics who admired the apparent ambiguity of Arden's earlier plays. Arden and D'Arcy then broke with established theaters in 1972 when they picketed the RSC's production of their play, The Island ofthe Mighty, because of cuts to the script and the overall direction. They further estranged themselves in 1975 with their 26-hour NonSrop Connolly Show based on the life of James Connolly. Since then, critics have largely neglected their newer plays, even though what is probably their most successful collaboration, Whose is the Kingdom?, a nine-part radio play on Constantine and the establishment of Christian orthodoxy, was produced by BBC3 in 1988. Most recently. Arden has been writing historical novels that use theater as a backdrop to examine the relationship between art and politics. To make mallers more difficult. much of D'Arcy and Arden's work in creating community theatrical events is poorly documented, and many of their plays, especially their radio plays, are unpublished. This collection of thirteen essays attempts (0 redress their recent neglect. In three excellent essays, Tish Dace discusses the lack of recognition apportioned to D'Arcy's role in the collaborative efforts. Jonathan Wike analyzes Arden's use of history in his novels, and Michael Cohen examines shifts in Arden's attitudes towards sixteenth- and seventeenth-century playwrights as a construct for analyzing Arden 's understanding of theater. Unfortunately, other essays in the collection are not up to the standard set by Book Reviews 359 these three. For example, in trying to establish the cultural background to Arden's early plays, Marianne Stenbaek writes: "Socialism and a greater attention to the workingclass had made inroads throughout the twentieth century in England, but the country was still ruled and run by the Establishment until after W.W. II." Catherine Graham is right in pointing out that D'Arey and Arden are trying to cultivate a "non-traditional" audience, but she paints herself into a comer trying to defend the length of The NonStop Connolly Show: "When the professional critics complain of exhaustion induced by such a lengthy presentation, we must consider the possibility that working-class audiences may construct quite different meanings from the same physical sensations." She misses the point that the playwrights were trying to create a unique theatrical event associated with an Easter weekend, more akin to a festival than a production with a run. In general, the essays try to make the case for Arden and D'Arcy through lavishing extravagant praise; for example, Marianne Stenbaek claims that "Arden, almost alone among...