Mini Reviews

MINI REVIEWS Michael Earley, Bonnie Marranca, Jill Silverman The Encyclopedia of World Theater. Edited by Martin Esslin. Charles Scribner's Sons, 320 pp., $25.00 (cloth). Encyclopedia making is a dangerously subjective business. The weights and balances assigned to entries and the overwhelming spectre of accuracy and judgment are bound to rub against someone else's received opinion. There seems little point in judging Martin Esslin's edition of The Encyclopedia of World Theater by such treacherous standards. Yet it should be mentioned that a large portion ofthis quick one-volume reference work is translated from the German model, FriedrichsTheaterlexikon. This answers the question of why the entries on Brecht and Reinhardt receive as many or more column inches than Shakespeare and Shaw. It also explains why there is an entry on Berlin but none on Paris, London, and New York. Esslin's Encyclopedia is a remarkably concise and informative compendium of 2000 single entries. Arranged alphabetically, few of the entries run over the maximum length of some 700 words and each is composed solidly of facts. Not a word seems wasted. For this English-language edition, condensed to allow for 420 illustrations, Esslin added British and American entries to a work already solidly biased towards Continental and Eastern European theatre and drama. The accent of the work is on modernism. In fact, Esslin in his introduction likens browsing through an encyclopedia to the aleatory function of modern art. Because of the strict alphabetical listing of entries and an elaborate system of textual cross references, the work has only an index listing 5000 plays. Bearing in mind its biases, this new encyclopedia is a welcome complement to the few standard reference works in theatre. ME Modem American Scenes for Student Actors. Edited by Wynn Handman. Bantam Books, 318 pp., $2.95 (paperback). Students of acting, whether in universities or professional training schools, are always looking for scene studies to practice their craft. This latest book of scenes and monologues is a welcome addition to such collections, particularly since it covers the broad spectrum of acting styles in 76 American drama from Clifford Odets to Sam Shepard. Among the playwrights included, in addition to the usual selections from Hellman, Inge, Miller, are those one is less likely to find in such books-Lanford Wilson, Anne Sexton, Ed Bullins, William Hauptman, Maria Irene Fornes, Jules Feiffer. All in all, this helpful book gathers together more than fifty scenes-from the psychological naturalism of the past to the new stylized naturalism of the present. BGM Repertory in Review: 40 Years of The New York City Ballet. Nancy Reynolds. The Dial Press, 358 pp., $22.50 (cloth). In contrast to the current glut of large, overpriced dance picture books that seem to be flooding the market these days, Repertory in Review emerges as an outstanding work of extraordinary proportion and importance. Nancy Reynolds has meticulously compiled and documented the repertoire of perhaps the single most important ballet company of the century, gathered hundreds of previously unpublished photographs, and pulled this all together with three invaluable essays by Lincoln Kirstein, Walter Terry, and Nancy Goldner. This is a multifaceted volume that will provide information for scholars, background for balletomanes, and a fascinating picture of American cultural history for the general reader. Never before has George Balanchine been so clearly revealed and discussed as in Lincoln Kirstein's introduction. This is not merely the stylistic analysis of one of the foremost artists and expounders of modernism in our time, but it also reveals the uniquely American kernel that lies at the center of Balanchine's aesthetic. Walter Terry's brief essay about Kirstein and Balanchine as personalities is followed by Nancy Goldner's detailed account of the School of the American Ballet and its method of training young dancers. Nancy Reynolds then chronicles each individual work, one by one, from the first performance of Serenade (1935) to the bicentennial bash Union Jack (1976). Her entries include all the vital statistics from the performances, including casts and later cast changes, the descriptions of the works, how they were created, and how they were received. If one sits and reads this book through, the continuum of dancing that...