The Moon Belongs to Everyone: Making Theatre with 7:84 by Elizabeth MacLennan, and: The Bone Won't Break: On Theatre and Hope in Hard Times by John McGrath (review)

Book Reviews up a "Laboratory," nor has he sought to build up a permanent company. His work has been carried out within the constraints that afe normal for the professional theatre in Poland. But this does not mean that he has shunned experiment: his production of The Idiot, for example, was al~ost entirely improvised and never used the same sequence of scenes from one night to the next. In fact, his work for the theatre has often proved to be more experimental than his work for film. In 1984 he said: "I try never to mix the two [film and theatre), When I am working in the theatre. I look for the theatrical. For me a theatre is a convention, the relationship between the actors and a live audience." True to this principle. his productions have constantly experimented with the playing space and its relalionship to the audience space. For The Idiot, he even opened up the rehearsals to an audience. This is an unusually sensitive and complex assessment of a director's work. Maciej Karpinski is well-placed 1 0 write such a study, having observed the director at work many times and even collaborated with him on some of his productions. From this experience, he can draw on the delailed knowledge and understanding of working methods that are essential, and he does so without falling into the trap of eulogising his subject. He traces Wajda's development, both in his choice of themes and in his formal experiments, and sets his theatre work in the context of his film directing. His evocations of rehearsals and performances are vivid and the book is lavishly illustrated . Its only fault is that it is too short. This is perhaps because it was originally published (in Polish) in J980 and so concentrates on Wajda's work over only two decades, the sixties and seventies. His more recent work is not ignored. but is treated less thoroughly and, most sadly, leaves out Wajda's astonishing third Hamlet entirely. But in every other respect this is an exemplary study which opens our eyes yet again to the extraordinary depth and strength of theatre in Poland since the Second World War. Particularly valuable 'is the introduction, giving a brief but pithy overview of the theatre, and clarifying the role of all the major directors and perfonners during this extraordinary period in Poland's history. DAVID BRADBY, ROYAL HOLLOWAY AND BEDFORD NEW COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON ELIZABETH MACLENNAN. The Moon Belongs to Evelyolle: Making Theatre with 7:84. London: Methuen 1990. Pp. 214. illustrated. £9.99 (PB). JOHN MCGRATH. The Bone WOII', Break: 011 Theatre and /-lope ill Hard Times. London: Methuen 1990. Pp. 166. £7.99 (PB). "Has anybody ever said anything to you in a theatre that really made a difference to your life and attitudes? ... Do you see yourself as part of the experience happening on the stage or outside it? ... Should the audience leave their politics in the cloakroom ? If so, why? ... Is there such a thing as a socialist actor?" (pp. 1-2). Book Reviews These are some of the 37 questions with which Elizabeth MacLennan begins her book. Both texts seek answers, recalling the reasons for forming the 7:84 companies and the heart of the experience of 7:84 through the 70S and 80S. These companies in England and Scotland presented committed political theatre for nearly two decades. Yet they are poorly documented: a section on the early years in Catherine hzin's Stages 0/ the Revolution ( 1980); a chapter in Eugene van Erven's Radical People's Theatre (1988); most of the scripts were not published. (7:84 took its name from the startling statistic that 7% of the population of Britain owned 84% of the wealth.) 7:84 was a kind of collective, but it was also one man, John McGrath, Artistic Director of both companies, author and director of many of the shows. MacLennan's book - with her daughter's drawings, excerpts from her sons' diaries. her own diary for 1988 alternating with a chronological account - seems artless and idiosyncratic. In fact, MacLennan presents herself as woman, actor, wife, mother, political activist, to the reader...