Contemporary American Playwrights by Christopher Bigsby (review)

Reviews (1995). The chapter concludes with a balanced assessment of Andre Previn's 1998 opera. Kolin has painstakingly examined the Streetcar reviews and constructed a readable summary of what productions were like and how audiences responded to them at different times in the play's history. Readers see, for example, how the shocking subject matter that dismayed censors in the 1940S and 1950S ceased to be an issue in later decades. Kolin also successfully shows how provocative productions in the I980s brought to mind issues of domestic violence, while alternative productions by black and gay theatre groups "foreground issues of race, ethni"city, and gender" (120). Altogether, Kolin's treatment of individual productions may be uneven - supporting cast members are not given equal consideration, and set design and music are discussed only in some productions - but his analysis is always judicious, and his compendium is rich in comparisons that highlight the subtle complexities of Williams's masterpiece. CHRISTOPHER BIGSBY. Contemporary American Playwrights. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. 440. $59.95 (Hb); $22.95 (Pb). Reviewed by Melanie Blood, SUNY Col/ege at Geneseo Christopher Bigsby has long been one of the most supportive academic critics of American theatre. His latest book, Contemporary American Playwrights, focuses on ten writers still creating work for the stage, some better known than others, but all of whom have failed to reach the stature that Bigsby argues they deserve in American culture. He skips those who have had much ink spilled over their plays, like Edward Albee, David Mamet, and Sam Shepard, but includes others of their generation, such as Lanford Wilson and John Guare, who he believes deserve more attention. The majority of the writers he includes began their careers in the I970S and 1980s, and all had accumulated·a substantial body of work by the late I990s. His ten selections are well balanced in terms of gender and sexual identity, but he is notably lacking in writers of color. Perhaps he is planning another book addressing these playwrights in the next few years. The authors covered in Contemporary American Playwrights are mostly New York-based, perhaps because of American critics' tendency to validate playwrights based upon their success in New Yark or perhaps because of Bigsby's own limited access to more regionally based playwrights. The ten playwrights treated by Bigsby, in the order they appear in his book, are John Guare, Tina Howe, Tony Kushner, Emily Mann, Richard Nelson, Marsha Norman, David Rabe, Paula Vogel, Wendy Wasserstein, and Lanford Wilson. Bigsby's book is organized by author, but it has no real chronology based 268 REVIEWS upon date of birth or production/publication of a first major work. He often makes forays into American theatre history, cultural history, novels, or other material that helps to establish a context within which to examine a play or author. For example, his discussion of the early days of off-off-Broadway is embedded in the chapter on John Guare, who was an early writer for Caffe Cino, while the reception of Theatre of the Absurd by American audiences is used as an introduction to Tina Howe's work. The social impact of the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s in America is revisited to aid Bigsby's discussion of David Rabe's early plays, and in introducing Wendy Wasserstein, he discusses the backseat role of comedy in American literature as well as the tradition of ethnic humor in the popular theatre. Bigsby begins each chapter with a brief biography and the earliest playwriting experiences of his subjects, usually in non-professional theatre. For these segments, he is indebted to previously published works such as David Savran 's In Their Own Words and Jackson R. Bryer's The Playwright's Art. Basic facts about awards and Broadway runs are also always included. But most valuable are the subtle readings of each playwright's works, in which Bigsby very effectively defines terms by which to evaluate individual plays and then analyzes them in those terms. Thus, his treatment of the ten playwrights varies dramatically , as does his approach to different plays within each writer's oeuvre. Although not an American himself, Bigsby is sensitive to...