In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Book Reviews 121 At the end of their careers, Henzie and Martin Browne took on a final challenge, an invitation issued to both of them by Pitney Van DuseD , president of Union Theological Seminary. to establish a program in religious drama as part of Union's graduate curriculum. In many ways, the effectiveness ofthis memoir comesfrom thefact that the book, like the Hfe ofthe Brownes together, is a collaboration. They had planned it together before Henzie's death in 1973. Each wrote a prologue describing their lives before their meeting. when she was a young professional actress and he was a director of amateur productions. His chapters are interspersed with hers or drawn from letters she wrote to their children when they were sent to America during the war. Her animated, human tone contrasts with his more factual style. We thus see both of their personalities at play, and the different strengths each brought to their marriage and to their long theatrical partnership. The real question posed by the record ofa life that contributed so much to our time is: what was the source of such force and energy? E. Martin Browne would undoubtedly have answered that it was his sense ofChristian commitment. I suspect that his vision of another kind ofmodem theater. which would produce a more stylized and poetic drama, was equally important. We should celebrate books like this one for the sense they give both of real theater history and of the people who create it. CAROL H. SMITH, RUTGERS UNIVERSITY FREDERICK J . MARKER AND LISE-LONE MARKER. Edward Gordon Craig and The Pretenders: A Production Revisited. Carbonda1e and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press 1981. pp.xii. 134. illustrated. $19.95. Having been a somewhat interested observer of the Edward Gordon Craig "scene" for some twenty-five years now, I find it rather ironic that, after many years of being ignored, particularly in the English-speaking countries, since his death, he seems 10, be coming into his own. In the early part ofthe 1960's, works appeared in Italy and France (the latter successfully surviving translation into English and German) which were excellent introductionsto Craig's life and work. Since Craig died in the summerof 1966, however. there has been a spate of work in periodicals-and books most gratifying to the idolaters. In this period, there has been a syllogistic pattern of development: from the general treatment of the man and artist in his son's biography of 1968 to the latest of a number of works focusing on very specific branches of his checkered career; from a recent book on Craig as typographer to the most recent, Frederick J. and Lise-Lone Marker's Edward Gordon Craig and The Pretenders: A Production Revisited. (Two others are in the offing: Christopher Innes's onCraig as directorand Laurence Senelick's on the Moscow Hamlet.) Revisiting The Pretenders is a most welcome project; it is the first attempt to document one of Craig's stage productions, placing it in its historical context with a strong endeavor to be fair and avoid bias. To a considerable extent, the authors have been remarkably successful. They have the advantage ofknowing Danish, which allows 122 Book Reviews them to deal with sowces which have not been much used in the past. In particular, their access to the archives at the Danish Royal Theatre and to those at the Bibliotheque Nationale pennits them to flesh out the production fully. The opening chapter deals with Craig as designer-director of produced and unrealized projects concerning Ibsen plays. Proceeding to give a historical setting for the 1926 production, the authors supply a perfonnance history of the play at the Copenhagen theatre. The third chapter brings Craig to Copenhagen, the interval between Johannes Poulsen's invitation and the opening night being only three months. The following three chapters, undoubtedly the most intriguing. deal with the production itself (during the rehearsal period, Craig functioned mostly as a "critical adviser" to Poulsen, rather than as a creative director); a separate chapter is devoted to Craig's scenography, and another to the costuming. Concluding the text, a chapter is allotted to the relationship between Craig and Poulsen following the...

pdf

Share