Post-War British Theatre by John Elsom, and: Anger and Detachment: A Study of Arden, Osborne and Pinter by Michael Anderson (review)

Book Reviews • POST-WAR BRITISH THEATRE by John Elsom. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976. viii + 228 pp. £3.95. ANGER AND DETACHMENT: A STUDY OF ARDEN, OSBORNE AND PINTER, by Michael Anderson. London: Pitman, 1976. 127 pp. £3.50. John Elsom's Post- War British Theatre is primarily about the playwrights of his period (six chapters out of twelve). Though all his comment has to be short, he iii frequently pointed: Christopher Fry was "the Euphues of the 1950s" (p. 67); T. S. Eliot ceased to appeal because "corruption did not mean the Bird sitting on the Broken Chimney, as in The Family Reunion: it meant Auschwitz and the Siberian labour camps" (p. 70); or this: "The success of Look Back in Anger destroyed several inhibiting myths about plays: that the theatre had to be genteel, that heroes were stoical and lofty creatures, that audiences needed nice people with whom to identify'" (p. 80). Elsom devises three categories to make sense of a crowd of sixties' playwrights comedies of middle-class decline (John Mortimer, Giles Cooper, Frank Marcus); epic and documentary (A Man for All Seasons, The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Arden's Armstrong's Last Goodnight); and nonsense (N. F. Simpson and James Saunders ' Next Time I'll Sing to You). Elsom begins with the state of the theatre in the forties, challenging established opinion dating everything that matters from May 1956, and points to the popularity of American musicals, the kind of fact most serious critics ignore. He writes forcefully on changes in acting styles, from smooth Noel Coward to working-class Alan Bates: "Once British acting in general had been considered prim, upper-class and inhibited; then, in the late 1950s, it was gruff, tough and virile; then, from the mid-1960s, it was known for mime, style and athleticism" (p. 146). In three other chapters, he neatly contrasts the development of the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company in the sixties and seventies; explores changes in subsidy patterns and the dangerous dominance of the Arts Council; and gives a brisk history and categorizing of the fringe from 1963 onwards. In conclusion, he finds a growing classless317 318 BOOK REVIEWS ness reflected by such means as theatre-design and subsidy patterns; and he ends with praise for recent improvements in music and movement in the theatre, and for the number of able directors, designers, and witty writers. The book's faults are essentially those of omission, the result of Elsom's struggle to compress so many facets of thirty years into a couple of hundred pages. The Royal Court since 1956 receives far less space than the National and RSC. Design is left out: Sean Kenny, Ralph Koltai, and Svodoba are missing, and John Bury is named once. Elsom's effort to squeeze many groups into his chapter on the fringe reduces to a shorthand with which nothing is said to distinguish Red Ladder from Hull Truck, nor both from a real curiosity like the Welfare State. Elsom should show more awareness of television and radio in his period; by leaving them out, he gives a lopsided view of such writers as Cooper and David Mercer. And the evolution of satire should take in That Was the Week That Was as well as Beyond the Fringe. I suspect that in his period, directors have risen to a uniquely dominant position, yet Lindsay Anderson, for example, is mentioned only in passing. Various small errors should be recorded for correction in a second edition . The reference to Invitation to the Castle (p. 54) should probably be to Dinner with the Family. Esslin reports on the success of Godot at San Quentin prison, not Sing Sing (p. 62). Musgrave was not a winner in the Observer competition (p. 84); Elsom is thinking of Ann Jellicoe's The Sport of My Mad Mother. The World of Paul Slickey played at the Palace, not the Royal Court (p. 84). Proofreading is poor: Colin Blakely's surname is consistently mis-spe1t; Mrs Wilson's Diary is given correctly as 1967 on p. 101 and as 1968 on p. 180. The Living Theatre gave Frankenstein in London in 1969, not 1971 (p. 148...