The Abbey at the Queen's: The Interregnum Years: 1951–1966 by Michael O'Neill (review)

HUMANITIES 387 and in Small Ceremonies and Lady Oracle). The table of contents is like an eclectic and appetizing menu in which the reader cum diner wants to sample widely. Alas, the fare served up is not fully cooked. Like all edited collections, this one suffers from unevenness in research, writing, clarity, consistency, and originality. There are a couple of articles that do not obviously adhere to the scholarly mandate of the book and which throw the reader off course (most notably Imbeau). To further complicate the challenge to collected volumes, this one is multidisciplinary. No reader will be an expert in all of the fields covered. Therefore it is incumbent on the contributors to present their material in an accessible way without undermining the substance or sophistication of their argument. Not all do this equally well. Moreover, the opaquely theoretical contributions need to set out the connection to perceptions of Canada more clearly (Imbert, Hertz-Ohmes). Finally, many articles make tantalizing suggestions but race through their arguments and evidence too quickly. Ten of the fifteen articles are between six and nine pages. The result is essays that are fragmentary rather than concise. If the scholar=s meal as a whole is disappointing, there are some tasty morsels. This reader finished the book eager to read Carol Shields=s portrayal of the sentimental attraction of Britain and the assimilative force of America on Canadian culture; surprised at the control and contrivance over the supposedly back-to-nature experience of Canada=s national parks; enlightened about the subtlety of the nationalist strategy of First Nations groups; grateful for some helpful references on railways, nationalism, the environment and other topics. As a whole the articles in this collection do make an important point. Canada is much more than not the United States of America. Viewed from within and without, there are multiple images and understandings of this country. No perception is more valid or objective than any other. Whatever one=s vantage point, Canada exists as a subjective reality, revealing as much about the viewer as the object viewed. (FRANCINE MCKENZIE) Michael O=Neill. The Abbey at the Queen=s: The Interregnum Years: 1951B1966 Borealis 1999. xxvi, 320. $39.95 With this book Michael O=Neill makes a valuable addition to the documentation of the Abbey (and Irish) Theatre, to which he has so amply contributed , notably with the volumes of Joseph Holloway=s diary that he edited with Robert Hogan and his study of Lennox Robinson. The fifteen years that the Abbey company spent at the Queen=s, after its own house was destroyed by fire, were not its most glorious B neither, for that matter, did they match the earlier years at the Queen=s, when it played Boucicault and 388 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 other delights while the Abbey staged literature. In fact, the Abbey=s >interregnum= (as O=Neill calls it) at the Queen=s was remarkable at the time, and in retrospect, for its consistency in producing feeble new plays and laxly staged old ones. But audiences may have, as O=Neill claims they did, seen a mirror of sorts held up to their lives. The bulk of O=Neill=s book consists of useful documentation. The four appendices supply various data for the fifteen years in question, in context with data for the Abbey overall up to 1966. So it is possible to make comparison between the Queen=s years and the Abbey Street years. For instance, the number of translations into Irish during the fifteen years at the Queen=s was thirteen, while eighteen were done during the forty-seven years on Abbey Street; the equivalent figures for translations into English being two and twenty-one respectively. The Irish language, then, had a high priority and profile in these years B a fact not unrelated to the Abbey=s status as a state-subsidized theatre. Of the book=s five chapters, four are devoted to short commentaries on the plays, listings of players, directors and designers, and biographical sketches of authors. That is to say, they are compilations of much the same sort as the appendices. But they do allow a little room for brief...