Peter Stein: Germany’s Leading Theatre Director by Michael Patterson (review)

books and company Peter Stein: Germany's Leading Theatre Director. Michael Patterson. Cambridge University Press, 186 pp., $32.50 (cloth); $10.95 (paper). Stein is surely one of the great contemporary directors, yet scant coverage of his productions appears in publication here (one exception is Yale Theater's 1977 issue on him), and if It weren't for the few films of his productions available, only those able to travel to Germany could be acquainted with his work. Patterson's volume, therefore, is a welcome event because it follows Stein's career from his first professional production, Edward Bond's Saved in 1967, upto his 1980 Oresteia, from Munich, Bremer, and Zurich, to the Schaubuhne am Halleschen Ufer in West Berlin where Stein and his company have resided the last dozen years. Patterson weaves his narrative around the comments of Stein, actors (Bruno Ganz, Edith Clever, Sabine Andreas, et al.), dramaturgs (Dieter Sturm, Botho Strauss), and German critics who intelligently examine the productions. One of the most notable sections in the book is the chapter documenting Stein's famous production of Peer Gynt which rethought the political and aesthetic implications of the play for contemporary bourgeois audiences. Stein's work on the many classics he's done over the years is a model for how to revision drama in an anti-classical age. Patterson is for the most part a chronicler of Stein's history in the theatre; he doesn't question his subject's intentions or results but presents the facts in a straight-forward, chronological fashion, rather dryly. Nevertheless , one must be grateful for his introduction to the Schaubuhne which, by any standards, in any age, is a great theatre, and Stein a remarkable theatre mind. This book is part of Cambridge University Press's "Directors in Perspective" series which also includes new books on Ingmar Bergman and Max Reinhardt, with many others in preparation. Bonnie Marranca American Humorists, 1800-1950. Edited by Stanley Trachtenberg. Gale Research, 2 vols., xiv + 705 pp., $140.00 (cloth). Costumes Through the Ages. Rizzoli International Pubis., 256 pp., 1,500 color Illus., $45.00 (cloth). 130 ...