The Italian Theatre Today: Twelve Interviews by Alba Amoia (review)

424 BOOK REVIEWS attacks in the main, like those upon Synge and O'Casey, came from the public ignorance of literary method." "Forgetting" was one of Yeats's common diplomatic and artistic usages, but it was particularly odd to "forget" the value of a shrine to the Virgin in this context. More seriously. it was not, apparently, only Yeats's attackers who were confused about literary (and theatrical) method. The later Yeats knew his own mind much better on the reality of symbols. and in Purgatory, at least, was able to fuse verbal and stage imagery with unequalled symbolic intensity- though the Boy is more setting than "character," and the verbal form is essentially. and significantly. monologue. Yeats's concern with stage decoration, which underwent one or two revolutions , is strongly emphasised in The Noble Drama of W. B. Yeats, and Liam Miller has enlivened the text with many excellent illustrations of stage designs, costumes, masks and the like, as well as other memorabiha. These, in association with ample quotation, bring the reader as close as any book can to the actual materials which constitute the record of Yeats in the theatre; and for this reason, the book will be indispensable to a proper understanding of Yeats and his theatre. I would recommend it first to neophytes, and it will recommend itself to initiates and adepts. But the Challenge of Yeats the playwright remains in the study as well as on the stage, and this, I believe, must be met by the kind of critical and broadly historical study of his plays, theatrical policies and theory that has not yet been attempted. MICHAEL J. SIONELL University of Toronto THE ITALIAN THEATRE TODAY: TWELVE INTERVIEWS, by Alba Amoia. Troy, New York: The Whitston Publishing Company, 1977. 136 pp. $12.50. The Italian Theatre Today is a collection of interviews with twelve Italian playwrights, directors, and actors: Paolo Grassi, Franco Enriquez. Franco Fano, Arnoldo Foa, Turi Ferro, Luigi De Filippo, Checco Durante, Giorgio Alhertazzi, Luigi Squarzina, Daniele Constantini, Roberto Mazzucco, and Gastone Moschin. The result is not per se a history of the Italian theatre todaya descriptive perception of its accomplishments, difficulties, experiments, and promises. The methodology of the volume, a series of interviews averaging ten pages, defines the limits of its inquiry and consequently of its conclusions. We are offered fragments, impressions, impromptu reactions to a number of questions presented by the interviewer, Professor Alba Amoia, of the Department of Romance Languages at Hunter College of the City University of New York, to a number of personalities involved, in many capacities, with the present theatrical scene in Italy. The majority of the people interviewed are stage directors and actors, although several have also written plays. One would wish other people to be included in the collection, like Fo, Ronconi, Strehler, same women; but the profession of the interviewer has limits, and the selection is large enough to be representative. The single most engaging interview, in my opinion, is the one with Giorgio Albertazzi (pp. 71-95), and it is also the most extensive in the collection. What we generally get are individual reactions, often repetitive because of the structure of the book, at times even contradictory- impressions, rather than fully developed arguments. An interview is comparable to a chemical reaction: it produces effects pro- BOOK REVIEWS 425 portionate to the agents and catalysts operative in the reaction. The questions presented by the interviewer in the book are essentially the following: (1) Is there a national theatre at present in Italy? Has the institutionalization of the Stabile Theatres created such a reality? (2) To what extent has the Italian theatre been politicized? Does it present a political dimension as a necessary confrontation with the quotidian? (3) How have the manifestations of the avant·garde theatre been accepted by the Italian public? (4) Is there a perceptible divergence of audiences between Northern and Southern Italy in acceptance or refusal of innovations, traditional repertory, emotional responses, etc.? (5) To what extent has state support of the theatre alleviated its financial problems and in turn interfered with its freedom of expression? (6) What does the future hold for the Italian theatre? (7) What is the...