American Drama Since World War II by Gerald Weales (review)

BOOK REVIEWS AMERICAN DRAMA SINCE WORLD WAR 11, by Gerald Weales, New York, Harcourt, Brace &: World, Inc., 1962, 246 pp. Price $5.75. There is no doubt that an assessment of American drama written and produced since World War II is a very worthwhile study. Professor Gerald Weales has attempted this task, and for a certain audience his work will be well appreciated. Some readers, however, will be disappointed with the limitations of his approach, and others will be alternately charmed and irritated by his writing style. For the person who wants a cursory view of what has been going on in the theater on and off Broadway during the past fifteen years, Professor Weales provides a great many answers. He characterizes his criticism, however, by his observation that "one tends to talk about American drama in terms of product rather than art." Granting the limitations of his subject, drama as literature is not his concern, and his book might be more appropriately titled "American Theater Since World War II." The task of evaluating and imposing some sense of order upon American plays produced since World War II is considerable, and one is impressed by WeaIes' ability to treat this expanse of drama. After chapters on Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, he considers "The New Pineros" (Robert Anderson, Arthur Laurents, and William Inge), "The Video Boys," "The Playwrights of the Twenties and Thirties," "Comedy," "Musical Theater," "The Vagaries of Adaptation," "Poets and Novelists on Stage," plays appearing "Off-Broadway," and a few previously omitted dramatists in a concluding chapter called "A Gathering of Fugitives." Weales is at his best in his essay on light "Comedy." Here his characteristic bright and frequently caustic touch compliments his sophisticated observations and provides stimulating reading. The chapter on "TV" comments mainly, though not in very valuable detail, on the problems of writing for TV, adding that TV dramatists bring little to American theater_ His observations on the "Musical Theater" provide a good general picture of that genre while giving WeaIes an opportunity to discuss those musicals in which he is most interested; In these and other chapters the emphasis is on a reasonably comprehensive portrayal of theater activity. One feels the serious loss, however, of searching criticism and more substantial values for discrimination. A major disappointment in this book is its limited objective: mainly, it is written for a non-academic audience. Possible exceptions to this statement are Weales' essays on Miller and Williams and his concern for the "new Pineros"all of whom he treats with some perception. But he is not a critic with much sense of the past in drama, either as literature or theater, and the consequent loss is obvious. In his chapter on "The Playwrights of the Twenties and Thirties" he simply lists their postwar efforts and makes no attempt to evaluate their progress or their contributions to American drama. Dealing with "Poets and Novelists on Stage" he shows little sympathy or understanding and is particularly weak in his treatment of Robinson Jeffers and William Carlos Williams. He does not seem comfortable in assessing drama as literature. In his "Off-Broadway" 218 1963 BOOK REVIEWS 219 chapter he vaguely suggests some future in the American theater for those playwrights whom we know as the "Absurdists," but his comments are hesitant and without force. Generally he lacks the depth and background which would distinguish his book as scholarly rather than popular. His style of writing also emphasizes his limited approach. Mainly it is brash and casual with touches of wit and cynicism that are too obvious. Far too often its flash of brilliance gives way to superficiality, although the gadfly approach is occasionally effective. The critic becomes irritating, however, when he becomes condescending and impish. There are the gossipy parenthetical observations (Vidal "does not talk art and poor mouth at the same time, like Chayefsky"), the personal humanizing confessions (he is "touched by so obvious a romantic speech" as one in Born Yesterday), the unnecessarily crude observations (the heroine of The Moon is Blue is "a cock-teaser"), the casual comments (concerning William Carlos Williams, "come to think of it, the verse that it does have is pretty much prose...