Theatre under the Nazis ed. by John London (review)

322 REVIEWS person, a standard convention, but in this case an awkward one, putting a selfinterested spin on the vocabulary that he so artfully deploys elsewhere. One notices that the third-person "Richards" tends to "demonstrate," "argue," and "agree," whereas Lehmann and BenD are prone to "claiming," "admitting," "assuming," and, in one case, "misrepresenting" (63-79). A more judicious choice of words - or a finner editorial hand - would have made this debate about scene choice, textual contamination, and the play's social content more consistent with the book as a whole. Also in chapter three, Richards is too obviously dismissive of critical perspectives influenced by theatrical practice. His tone is vaguely disapproving of the influence that a Berliner Ensemble production had on Klaus Kanzog, who sidesteps "sound principles ofediting" in favour of producing a "playable text" (74). He also rues Woyzeck translator Henry J. Schmidt's stated belief that editors should not forestall readers from organizing the fragments themselves . Richards sees this as "an invitation to the kind of arbitrary and inaccurate statements," valorizing the play's indetenninacy, with which Richard Schechner introduces the Schmidt text (74). "Schechner's position," Richards writes, "may have some relevance for directors wanting to use Woyzeck as a vehicle for their own creativity, but they contribute little or nothing to our understanding of Btichner's text." Schmidt's flexible approach to the text, Richards adds, "is meant for such directors" (75). In a history of editing and textual criticism - with no parallel survey of Woyzeck on stage - these shots are at best glancingly effective. Georg Buchner 's Woyzeck: A History 0/Its Criticism is essential reading for scholars and practitioners; teachers of the play will refer to it perennially; the stylistic missteps make chapter three no less useful for the infonnation it contains. When it comes to the theatre, however, Richards appears to favour a fixity of text and meaning that could inhibit more than the "creativity" of which he is leery. The play's complex textual history should be exploited, not for the sake of the directorial ego, but for its vitality. To tap that vitality on stage, as Richards does in print, would do no violence to the great and original work from which it flows. JOHN LONDON, ed. Theatre under the Nazis. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. Pp. 356, illustrated. $74.95 (Hb); $35.00 (Pb). Reviewed by Stacey Connelly, Trinity University Popular perceptions of theatre in the Third Reich tend to extremes. Surveys of modern European culture have characterized theatre during this period as belonging to two distinct categories: diversionary entertainment unaffected by Reviews 323 fascist ideology and blatant propaganda for the Nazi agenda of Aryan superiority and world dominance. Both images are simplistic and dismissive, the legacy of a Holocaust that still haunts us. The expression "nie wieder" ("never again"), long associated with the horror and humiliation Germans felt after World War II, captures an enduring reluctance to look back at such a painful time. Most scholars have preferred to focus on the periods before or after the Third Reich; books about Weimar Theatre and post-war German theatre abound. Readers are thus left ·to interpret this conscious omission of twelve years of German theatre history as best they can as a sign that scholars consider the period an aberration and uncharacteristic of "true" German theatre; that the Nazi regime produced inferior theatre, making it unworthy of scholarly attention; that conventional theatre scholarship isn't a valid analytical model for researching a theatre controlled by fascist politics; that the horror of Nazi crimes makes Nazi theatre an undeserving object of study; or finally, that information about this period is lost or unobtainable due to Germany's denial of its Nazi past. Granted, many biographers of dissident German directors, playwrights, and actors provide thorough examinations of their subjects' lives during the Third Reich, but principally from the vantage point of cultural exile. Thus, we have learned much about the work of German artists who fled to Paris, Moscow, New York, and Los Angeles, but little about those who remained behind. Recent works, however, such as Theatre in the Third Reich: The Pre-War Years (1995), edited by Glen Gadberry, and...