The Lost Summer: The Heyday of the West End Theatre by Charles Duff, and: The Plays of David Hare by Carol Homden (review)

356 Book Reviews discourse and the clinical discourse" (104). Indeed, Greene's article calls attention to the fact that many anicles give little consideration to contemporary theory and ignore important Anaud critics such as Jacques Derrida. Julia Kristeva, Leo Bersani, Felix Guattari, Gilles Deleuze, and Susan Sontag. Robert Baker-White's study of community,and representation outlines the pivotal theoretical interest in Artaud today. Baker-White locates the ethical paradox inherent in Artaud's desire for community by applying Derrida's critique of representation to his analysis of Anaud's legacy in experimental theater of the collectivist avant-garde. While focusing on the seminal works of Grotowski. Chaikin, and Schechner, his assessment comes close to Greene's, for he too is challenging the very modernist fascination with Artaud's notion of cruelty. However, other articles in the second section suggest a different view of Artaud's influence, which can be discerned from an astute reading of Derrida. Thomas Akstens writes in this vein about "Representation and De-realization: Artaud, Genet, and Sartre." Reinhold Grimm and Caroline Molina y Vedia question Artaudian fulfillment in the work of Peter Weiss. Thomas Donahue compares "The Aesthetic of the Erotic" in Artaud and Arrabal, and Peter L. Podol explores "Dualities, Complementary Characters , and Role Rev~rsals in Anaudian Theater: Shaffer, Arrabal, and Shepard." What these four articles have in comm9n is the discovery of an affirmation implicit in negativity . in non-fulfillment, in de-realization, and in transgressions of dualism. The anthology includes a valuable bibliography. which covers the vast scope of interest in Artaud as a key figure in modem and postmodem theater. Though not reaching a coherent unity or a conclusive statement, the book makes an important contribution by leaving open the vital intercultural debate that Artaud still inspires. ERELLA BROWN, HAIFA UNIVERSITY CHARLES DUFF, The Lost Summer: The Heyday o/the West End Theatre. London: Nick Hem Books 1995. pp. 272, illustrated. $32.99 (PB). CAROL HOMDEN. The Plays 0/ David Hare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1995· Pp. 261.. $59·95; $16.95 (PB). The Lost Summer, as Charles Duff acknowledges, is something of "a hybrid" since it developed out of taped interviews with the director, Frith Banbury, whose starry productions in the fifties conjure memories of matinee tea-trays at the Haymarket. That biographical framework encloses a critique of 50S drama. This, too, turns anecdotal, linking the plays to their authors' lives, but it does re-instate, to some degree, a theatre that, since Tynan's polemics against bourgeois drawing-rooms/retirement-homes, has been contemptuously brushed aside. ("Worried by nuclear tests? Juvenile crime, swastikas ? Feel safe at the Savoy.") Though he doesn't quite accomplish the job himself, Duff makes a good case for a re-assessment of Wynard Browne and Rodney Ackland, Book Reviews 357 and offers new perspectives on Ral1igan, Whiting, and Bolt. The book has a coherent force, despite the double focus, even if its title implies a more rigorous look at the actual texts. Readers of all sorts will savour Duff's gossipy account of the H. M. Tennent management , of 'Binki.' Beaumont and John Perry (his 'friend' and adjutant), of Banbury 's place in all that. Yet behind the naughty stories about Sir John and Sir Ralph, 'Talie' Baddeley, Joyce Grenfell and Dame Sybil, there are perceptions that should prove crucial to future historians. For instance, Duff discounts. head on, the suspicion that a gay mafia of producers and actors ruled the post-war West End and goes on to suggest that a terror of scandal (when homosexuality was a criminal offence) accentuated the respectability that so incensed the likes of Tynan against Aunt Edna. The sixties revolution was propelled by the straight. One also sees that star actors, eager to be liked, sentimentalized plays that were actually tougher. Duff re-creates the day-to-day realities of that period with intelligent immediacy. From a literary standpoint, Dufr~ analYSis is less persuasive; yet, because he sees the plays theatriCally, his views provide a useful counterpoint to academic theory. What, for example, might one now think of Whiling's Marching Song had Olivier played the lead, instead of Robert Aemyng (whose account of that experience...