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122 Book Reviews does offer many insights into feminist drama's structure and function, NatalIe tends to use her method uncritically. Comments on Aristotle's notion of the "universal laws of nature," for example. need to be rethought by any critic writing from a feminist viewpoint. Still, NatalIe raises important questions both about the persuasive force of feminist theatre and about its specific place within the women's movement. Her study, like Keyssar's, is grounded in actual performances as well as in the written dramatic texts and helps bring to our attention the work of numerous and often little-known contemporary women playwrights and theatre collectives. It is disappointing that neither Keyssar nor NatalIe chose to draw more fully on the already vast resources of the emergent feminist criticism, resources which might have helped them to formulate their questions more precisely and to rethink more radically their critical categories. Both books try to do a great deal and are only partially successful.. Yet they are significant and in many ways complementary additions to the slowly-growing body of book-length studies of women's contributions to the theatre. Each offers the reader an extensive bibliography - ofpublished and unpublished plays in the case of Keyssar's study and of both plays and secondary, critical and theoretical material in the case of Natalie's. Together, these two books present two very different facets of feminist theatre, helping to clarify not only that theatre's characteristics and powers but also its place in theatre history and contemporary society. KAREN LAUGHLIN, FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY LISE-LONE MARKER and FREDERICK J. MARKER. Ingmar Bergman: Four Decades in the Theater, New York: Cambridge University Press 1982. Pp. xvii, 262, illustrated. $39.50; $12.95 (PB). Discussing the projected film version of his stage production of Peer Gynt with 10hn Simon, Ingmar Bergman rejected the suggestion that his film would explain - once and for all- what the play is all about: "I think the only way to explain the play is to play it on the stage, because a film must be an adaptation," he maintained (John Simon, Ingmar Bergman directs [New York, 1972], p. 35). But although Bergman has been "explaining plays" for more than forty years, most of the world - unfortunately - still knows him only as a filmmaker. In order to remedy this situation, Lise-Lone and Frederick1. Marker have undertaken the formidable task of recapturing past performances of plays he has staged, periormances that now live only imperfectly in the memories of the actors who created the roles, and, of course, in the mind of Bergman himself. To facilitate their task, they have interviewed Bergman on various occasions, observed his directorial practices during rehearsals, interviewed his actors, carefully studied his prompt books ""and blocking plans, and sifted through the numerous newspaper reviews of each of his major productions, Supported by a wealth ofphotographs - the book is generously illustrated with 68 very well-chosen production photographs, 7 pictures of Bergman at work, and [8 floor or blocking plans ofthe productions discussed - this truly remarkable feat of reconstruction has resulted in a significant study of Bergman's genius as a theater director. Book Reviews 123 Flexibility of approach has always characterized Bergman's work in the theater, but, ofcourse, his preferences and his style have undergone considerable development since he embarked on his professional theater career in 1944. Though he has always preferred apresentational, anti-naturalistic style of staging - one that reminds the audience that it is watching a perfonnance - as a young man he preached what he calls "s theater of circumstances," that is. theater that relies rather heavily on such external components as setting, costume, and lighting design to stimulate the imagination ofthe audience. Si~ce his famous open-stage production of Buchner's Woyzeck in 1969, however, he has moved on to a radically simplified kind of theater that relies even more heavily than before on direct communication between actors and audience. Similarly, whereas the young Bergman was more closely attuned to a psychologically preoccupied "theater of characters," the mature Bergman seems, at times, almost to favor what J.P. Sartre called an "existential theater of situations and choices." Committed to the...

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