Saint Joan Fifty Years After: 1923/24 - 1973/74 ed. by Stanley Weintraub, and: Bernard Shaw and the Art of Drama by Charles A. Berst, and: The Marriage of Contraries: Bernard Shaw's Middle Plays by J.L. Wisenthal (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 205 produce the play entirely along "Epic" lines, the Theater Union, one of the most professional of the new producing units of the thirties dedicated to dramatizing the life of the working man, made what were for Brecht vitiating compromises: the pianists were seated in darkness rather than in full view of the audience, the lighting was too naturalistic, and the costumes were done with an authenticity that subverted the idea behind the playwright's famous "distancing" process, the Verfremdungseffekt. Most frustrating of all, the scenes were rearranged in a manner that deliberately emphasized the pathos of the situation. In spite of these modifications (made in part, one assumes, for greater audience appeal), Mother did not succeed, and closed after only thirty-six performances , the unit's shortest run. Clearly, America during the Great Depression was not ready for Brecht - and for most other playwrights whose work was radical in fact as well as in intent, for the thirties' stage was never quite as political as it liked to pretend, or as Professor Goldstein would have us believe in his informative and entertaining study. In his Preface, the author states that his book is meant to provide a "closefocused look at the writers, producers, directors, and actors who helped to give the cultural life of the Great Depression its own special tang," and this it does with admirable clarity and style. Still, one is occasionally left with the impression that Goldstein is expending an inordinate amount of energy accentuating the positive of material that he tacitly admits is second-rate (the two unpolitical "giants" of the period, O'Neill and Wilder, are mentioned only briefly). It is difficult, for example, to understand his enthusiasm for Robert Sherwood's Idiot's Delight (1936), a play he considers "the most intelligent drama of the thirties on international politics." It may very well be, given the dearth then of genuinely worthy American plays. Yet Goldstein fails to mention Sherwood's revealing error in making the play's French pacifist - who rhapsodizes about Lenin and the workers - an extreme Radical-Socialist. The omission is worth noting, since the Radical-Socialists of France were the party of small businessmen , totally rejected Lenin's doctrines and were neither radical nor socialist. Idiot's Delight, in retrospect, seems just another razzle-dazzle vehicle for the Lunts, which like all too many of its counterparts (the plays of Odets among them), only uses politics for ends that are primarily melodramatic and sentimental . Predictably, it proved vastly popular, had a long run, and won the Pulitzer Prize. On the whole Goldstein's discussions, especially those of the significant theater groups of the period - the Group Theatre, the Theatre Guild and the Federal Theater - are thoughtfully handled. The book for the most part is a solidly researched work that will serve as a useful introduction to the American drama and theater of this turbulent decade. STEPHEN GRECCO Pennsylvania State University SAINT JOAN FIFTY YEARS AFTER: 1923/24 - 1973174, edited by Stanley Weintraub. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973.259 pp. BERNARD SHAW AND THE ART OF DRAMA, by Charles A. Berst. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973.*** 343 pp. $10.95. 206 BOOK REVIEWS THE MARRIAGE OF CONTRARIES: BERNARD SHAW'S MIDDLE PLAYS, by J.L. Wisenthal. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974.259 pp. $10.00. As editor Stanley Weintraub points out in the introduction to his sampling of half a century of Saint Joan criticism, the popular image of Joan of Arc is now Shaw's and not the historical or hagiological Joan (nor, one might add, the Joan of other writers). In the book are some things that are old and some that are borrowed, for such is the nature of most anthologies; also, some that are new, for they are translated from Russian and other languages, or have appeared in publications not easily available or out of print. Nothing blue, though: for that, one might go to Shakespeare's Joan (no Maid she). Little matter that title and subtitle are inaccurate (copyright 1973, the book's most recent selection is 1970). Upon receiving the book, I looked forward with pleasure to reading those selections...