Establishing Our Boundaries: English-Canadian Theatre Criticism ed. by Anton Wagner (review)

Reviews 105 extract from each to help the reader negotiate Dunstone's discussion, rather than the excerpt from William S. Yellow Robe Jr.'s Sneaky. Howard McNaughton 's conversation with the Maori playwright Hone Kouka has the characteristic strength of such interview formats - the freshness of the practitioner 's view from the front line - but is of limited value for the reader unacquainted with his writing or with Maori theatre generally. (Again, an excerpt relevant to the discussion would at least have helped). The remainder of the pieces are a mixed bag, both in content and critical value. Neloufer de Mel gives an interesting account of Nigerian/Sri Lankan interculturalism involving productions at the University of Colombo of two Nigerian plays, Soyinka's Opera Wonyosi and Osofisan' s Nkrumah Ni!-A/rica Ni. These two dramatists are also the centre of attention in two other essays, Tejumola Olaniyan's Foucauldian analysis of Osofisan's Once Upon Foul' Robbers and Derek Wright's consideration of Soyinka as a historian of Yoruba theatre (which concludes, sensibly, that it's very hard to say "exactly what came when in Yoruba drama and what has derived from what" 1'701). Jacqueline Lo's discussion of K.S. Maniam's The Cord impressively combines theoretical insights with historical context and critical intelligence and makes one want to read a play that is, sadly, not easily available to a Western readership. I very much enjoyed Elaine Savory's essay on masking and gender in Caribbean theatre, which is thought-provoking in its conclusion that Derek Walcott's work has been concerned mainly with constructions of masculinity and in its suggestion that Caribbean constructions of the ·tragic have largely been provoked by the threat posed to male identity by colonialism. (Post)Colonial Stages is a useful contribulion to the growing awareness in Western academic and theatre communities of a wide range of texts broadlyperhaps too broadly - defined as postcolonial. For that awareness to increase further, and for academic commentary and debate to be as soundly based as possible, it is essential that there be much easier access to many more texts than we have at present. The back cover of this collection tells us that Helen Gilbert is herself currently compiling an anthology of postcolonial drama, which will at least go some way towards improving the situation. Let's hope that the expanding critical interest in postcolonial drama will be complemented by the willingness of major international publishers to publish anthologies and series devoted to the plays themselves. . ANTON WAGNER, ed. Establishing Our Boundaries: English-Canadian Theatre Criticism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. Pp. 416. $60.00 (Hb). Reviewed by James Dugan, University o/Calgary The title initially misleads. I expected a book on theatre criticism. A perusal of the table of contents forced a skeptical readjustment: this is really a book on 106 REVIEWS theatre jOllnzalism. My skeptical response persisted through Anton Wagner's long introduction, which provides a great deal of additional information and context. The series of rhetorical questions that concludes the introduction pro, voked one of my own: can daily newspaper reviews be worth over 400 pages of serious analysis by some of the major historians of the Canadian theatre? Having suffered the daily indulgences of Gina Mallet, Brian Brennan, et al. for many years, I was not receptive. Like many of my colleagues. I was educated into deep mistrust of schools of journalism, where students learn nothing about any subject but learn to write about all subjects. Wagner quotes early-twentieth-century reviewer B.K. Sandwell: "The time-honoured practice of sending the prize-fight editor to do the symphony concerts and the financial editor to strike a balance between Willard and Irving was then lea. 1895J finally abandoned on this paper [the Montreal Herald]" (185). Sandwell's optimism was premature. As late as the 1970s, Bryan Johnson was first a sportswriter, then the theatre reviewer. then the China correspondent for the Globe and Mail. Reading the book eradicated my skepticism. I answer "yes" to my own question. Wagner has organized the essays under four headings that carry the reader through chronologically and thematically: (I) "Editor-Critics"; (2) "Reviewer-Critics"; (3...