Adolphe Appia, Theatre Artist by Richard C. Beacham, and: Adolphe Appia: Essays, Scenarios, and Designs ed. by Richard C. Beacham (review)

Book Reviews 573 Dr. Raben's "strategic triad" (p. 95) works best in herchap[ers 4 and 5. She mentions the "menacing tone" (p. 73) of Pinter's The Birthday Party, but fails to note that "the other culture" (p. 92) in Pinter, though "not identified" (p. 92) is Jewishness. The rapprochement between the pre-Holocaust Water Hen and the post-Holocaust Endgame is valid and deepens our perspective of both plays. A thorough reading of Daniel Gerould on Witkiewicz and Ruby Cohn on Beckett yielded fine results. However, no Beckett scholar would call Deirdre Baie's irresponsible biography "ambitious" (p. Ill). No one will say about Major Strategies that it is not an ambitious study. A short book, it takes a huge bite of our cultural cake. Scholars. however, pride themselves on being gourmets rather than gourmands. Yet, though often seriously misleading. this study stimulates discussion. ROSElTE C. LAMONT, QUEENS COLLEGE OF CUNY AND THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF CUNY RICHARD C. BEACHAM. Adolphe Appia, Theatre Artist. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1987. pp. 190, illuSlraled. $44.50. RICHARD C. BEACHAM, eel. Adolphe Appia: Essays, Scenarios, and Designs. Trans. Wallher R. Volbach. Ann Arbor, London: U.M.1. Research Press 1989. Pp. 480, illustraled. $49.95. In 1905 the critic Georg Fuchs. who was soon to found the Munich Art Theatre. called for the radical reform of the proscenium arch stage with its perspective scenery and illusionistic productions: "Away with the footlights! Away with the wings. the backcloths. the flys. the flats, and the padded tights! Away with the peep·show stage! Away with the auditorium! This entire sham-world of paste. wire. canvas and tinsel is ripe for destruction! " At that time. in fact, Adolphe Appia, who had begun his career as a shy student of music in Switzerland. had for some twenty years been piecing together highly imaginative theories to justify such refonn. and his ground·breaking book, La Mise en scene du drame wagnerien. had been published in 1895, to be followed in 1899 by his equally important study. Die Musik und die Inszenierung. Today Appia is chiefly remembered for his innovative lighting design. but Richard Beacham is right to name him as the precursor of the symbolist stage refonners of his time in the use and development of scenic stage space and the kind of performance that went with it. Alas. he has not been recognized as such, and not until quite recently have the first two of five volumes of his essays and scenarios begun to appear in French from the Schweizerische Gesellschaft ftir Theaterkullur. Even less of his work has been available in English. and most of the selection of essays now published in U.M.I.'s Theatre and Dramatic Studies series have never before been translated - "a measure of his neglecl," Beacham aptly suggests. This makes the collection offered here and translated by the eminent Appia scholar Walther VoJbach an essential book. a bible 574 Book Reviews indeed ofstage symbolism for students of the modern theatre. With its companion study in the "Directors in Perspective" series from Cambridge, much of which is revised and reproduced for the helpful introductions to the Essays, and with a liberal sprinkling of well-chosen comparative designs in both books, this exciting period in western theatre history has been well served and the publication is an event in itself. Adolphe Appia was a private person. and to his diffidence as a stutterer we may owe so much of his writing. It is certainly worth telling his rather sad story again. His slUdy of music at Leipzig, and subsequently his study of art at Dresden, drew him inevitably to Wagner and to the composer's inspirationallhinking about the possible unity of music and drama, but Appia suffered an understandable disillusion when he saw Parsifal at Bayreuth. There the settings were still massively pictorial and quasi-realistic, and even the careful treatment of the characters belied the consistency of thinking present in the music and the drama. His preoccupation with Wagner after his death as the abiding genius of the new theatre an led Appia to redesign the Ring in order to articulate his vision ofa new kind of stagecraft...