Le Théâtre Moderne Depuis la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale (review)

BOOK REVIEWS LE THEATRE MODERNE DEPUIS LA DEUXIEME GUERRE MONDIALE, Vol. II, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, 1967, 344 pp. For the last ten years the French National Center for Scientific Research has held annual or bi-annual international colloquies on the theater, printing the papers presented in handsome illustrated volumes. The topics are usually quite general-Tragic Theater, Asian Theater, Realism and Poetry in the Drama. Their function is merely to prevent the score or more papers presented from roving too widely. In fact, under the general heading each paper develops quite independently of the others. On balance they are brief pTobes rather than extensive studies, valuable too because the international character of the colloquies introduces a certain variety in perspectives. The present volume on modern theater complements a first set of papers published some ten years ago and which with some exceptions looked back to the pre-war theater rather than forward. It comprises twenty-five papers by scholars most of whom are French but also includes such eminent names as Nicolas Akimov from Leningrad, Karel Kraus from Prague, Filip Kalan Kumbatovic from Ljubjana , Tadeusz Sivert from Warsaw, all directly involved with the stage. The papers vary considerably in length, ranging from a five page discussion of John Arden, the only British playwright included and under two headings, to Nina Gourfinkel 's solidly informative forty-five page survey of the evolution of Russian theater in the last quarter of a century, an extension of a first more limited paper included in Volume I. They vary too in emphasis. A few of them, in line with the over-all topic suggested, are in fact surveys: German theater since 1945; Italian theater on the move; Swedish theater since 1945; Polish literature since 1945. Others take up more specific themes: the foreign repertory of the Slovene stage; committed theater in Spain; German theater and World War II; contemporary French dramatists and history. Others still focus on specific figures: Ionesco, Beckett, Genet, Diirrenmatt, Josef Topol, a Czech playwright; Eugene Schwartz, a Russian. With two exceptions-papers on drama in francophone black Africa and on the plays of Aime Cesaire and Edouard Glissant, two Martinique poetsall the papers deal with Western drama. In contrast with the first volume in which only one paper on U.S. drama was included-a paper on Eugene O'NeillAmerican drama is the subject of three papers, a larger proportion than was allotted to anyone national group except, of course, the French. Of these one deals with the themes in the more recent plays of Tennessee Williams; another with American musical comedy; the third is an overall introduction to a fairly wide variety of playwrights-Leroi Jones, Kenneth Brown, Jack Gelber, Kopit, Jack Richards, Murray Schisgal, Edward Albee-each briefly characterized and seen as witnesses of various facets of a single trend, the United States' struggle with an acute awareness of a double alienation-social and mental. It is rather interesting to note that the papers of the French scholars interested in the American stage seem more in touch with recent trends over here than those dealing with the French stage itself. From our point of view the papers on Claudel, on Sartre's No Exit and Camus' State Of Siege seen as precursors to the 447 448 MODERN DRAMA February theater of the absurd; the papers on Beckett and Ionesco and, even though less, on Genet, seem singularly dated. The opening statement of the Genet article is illuminating in that sense: "People talk a lot about Genet and very little about his work." Some French scholars still seem too unaware of the work done over here. Provocative and helpful in contrast are the two articles dealing one with contemporary French playwrights and history, the other with the tragedies of decolonisation . Carefully edited, and as the index shows, with ride range, this volume , within its format and limits, brings valuable contributions to our knowledge of the contemporary stage. GERMAINE BRiE Institute for Research in the Humanities University of Wisconsin HAROLD PINTER, by Arnold Hinchliffe, Twayne Publishers, Inc., New York, 1967. This is a book which everyone who is seriously interested in Harold Pinter should have at...