Theatrewritings by Bonnie Marranca (review)

Book Reviews 503 playwrights grapple with that most vexed of problems for those socially prominent on the left - how to become "successful" and thus wield social power without giving up their roles as outsiders and reformers, and without trading their images as left-wing leaders for those of left-wing traitors. Wherever these issues are addressed, political plays move beyond the play-with-amessage fonnat and become dramas conducting a genuine inquiry into the social and theatrical issues they raise and explore. And when political plays move beyond offering pre-existing answers to pre-existing questions, their status as political plays is itself brought into question, and the whole notion of politic~l drama bec0n:tes, as Stoppard rightly points out, a problematic issue. At that point, of course, the generation of the seventies touches hands with the generation of the sixties and with earlier dramatists of this and othercenturies. But the link can be made without assigning these playwrights of the seventies to a unified category with their predecessors. No one who has seen Griffiths's The Party or Comedians (to take only one writer as an example) can doubt the power of "political" plays of the seventies as they challenge pre-existing answers and pre-existing questions. And no one who has read these interviews can ignore the potential ofthese playwrights to bring about much needed changes in the British theatre. Many of the interviews collected here shed fascinating light on the not-alwayssuccessful work of a group of dramatists who, at their best, avoid taking sides in established debates about the appropriate nature of theatre and society, and set out, as generations have before them, to recast the tenns of those debates and reformulate their goals. AUSTIN E. QUIGLEY, UNIVERSITY OF VlRGlNIA BONNIE MARRANCA. Theatrewritings. New York: Performing Arts 10urnal PubJicatirl]s 1984. Pp. 202, $19.95; $8.95 (PE). As has been noted elsewhere, Bonnie Marranca's theatre criticism tends both to delight and to irritate, and her most recent volume, Thealrewritings, will undoubtedly be met with the same polarity of reactions. This collection of previously published and new essays (as wen as selections from her Theatre of Images) will probably be doubly . suspect, since it is published by the press associated with the journal she coedits. However, while there is much about this volume that is self-indulgent, few critics can match Marranca as an analyst of contemporary dramatic and performance theory. Marranca early states that "Theatrewritings is for me a personal journal in which my feelings about the world are tangled up with feelings about theatre and writing" (p. 19), and this is the key to her approach in these eighteen essays: lhey are unified in her vision and in her style. The volume is decidedly journalistic, in the senses of being an illuminating report on the condition of the contemporary theatre, as well as a highly subjective and penetrating journal ofeclectic observations and analyses ofdiverse topics ranging from performance theory to "The Young Barbra Streisand." Book Reviews Although few, if any, critics have a better grasp of Sam Shepard's technique and dramatic vision, Marranca's self-conscious cleverness of form in "Alphabetical Shepard: The Play ofWords" inclines to obscure the value ofher perceptions. Similarly. the fITst half of "The Politics of Performance" is an important aesthetic and cultural essay. in which she dismisses, quickly and convincingly. many of the attitudes or prejudices that have hindered an effective examination of contemporary drama; yet the second half is fragmented, disjointed, a subjective collection of musings that tend to undermine herearlier, and quite.rigorous. study. In other places, as in "Essaying Images - The Archaeology of Consciousness: Meredith Monk's Recent Ruins," Marranca's impressionistic form matches the eccenuicity of her subject, complementing and illuminating her topic. Few would argue that theatrical criticism does not need new methods of inquiry; however, Marranca's insistence on altering the form of the discursive critical essay is often at cross-purposes with her message. To her credit, Marranca's conversational tone allows her immediacy: one quickly senses the conviction inherent in her subjective observations. She evinces a tendency toward pronouncement in her observations, but their very subjective and qualified...