New British Drama in Performance on the London Stage, 1970-1985 by Richard Allen Cave (review)

592 Book Reviews Canterbury Tales. Jonson's Vo/pone, Joyce's Dublillers, 19 volumes on Shakespeare, along with dozens of other "masterpieces" by Austen, the Beontes, Dickens, Fielding, Keats, and Marlowe, to give just a sampling. That a play by a living author can be located among this company and not raise anyeyebrows is surelystill worth a moment's pause. JONATHAN KALB, YALE UNIVERSITY RJCHARD ALLEN CAVE, New British Drama in Performance on the London Stage, 1970- 1985. New York: St. Martin's Press 1988. Pp. 335· $29.95. Cave's book is one every scholar, teacher, and serious student of contemporary British drama needs to own. But scholar, teacher. and student should note that the format of the book is atypical of many surveys. The author does not divide chapters into major playwrights and movements; there is no extensive effort at organization; there are no long bibliographies or lists of sources. New British Drama is, rust ofall, a short survey. The explosion in British drama that occurred in the mid-I950S continues, and the author's method is, roughly speaking, to divide the drama of the fifteen years he covers by genre (to use the word with more latitude than is usually the case). Cave places the major figures of these years in separate chapters to distinguish the themes and methods that separate them from their contemporaries. Forexample, he devotes separate chapters to Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett, describing Pinter's subject as "Man's yearning for wholeness and permanence in his emotional being and the traps the mind can spring against itself to keep it from a state of bliss" and Beckett's as "Man's hunger for metaphysical satisfaction." Cave's conscientiousness as a scholarlies not in minute analysis, but in the dedication with which he has watched and written about the plays of the period. Readers will be struck at how often the author mentions subsequent performances ofa play. Not only did Cave attend the same London plays many times, he often compares London productions with New York productions. Students will find this book a good guide to the major figures of the period. Teachers wiU get a sense of each playwright's canon and will know which to focus on. And the scholar will appreciate the informed lucidity of an academic who is so at ease with his subject that when he discusses Beckett's That Time (a play in which one voice is projected from three different sources), he naturally refers to Shakespeare's Richard II, playing several parts in his prison cell. When Cave summarizes English political drama of the past two decades he refers to the "Aristophanic spirit," the "healthy scepticism," of this drama. And when he analyzes the resurgence of the history play, Cave does so against the background ofBrecht's Galileo and Mother Courage (Pam Gems and Caryl Churchill, he says, "have broken away from Brechtian practice without losing touch with Brechtian principles.")_ Book Reviews 593 Readers will be unable to decide whether the author favors the naturalism of David Storey's The Changing Room, the highly metaphorical and intellectually challenging Jumpers ofTom Stoppard. Beckett's static and monologue-filled Footfalls, or Edward Bond's history plays. Cave's innate fairness includes receptivity not only to various kinds of plays, but to various social strata. He understands the lower-middle class milieu of Trevor Griffiths' The Party as well as he understands the upper-class inteIligenstia of Griffiths' Sam Sam. Also, the author's appreciation and tolerance extend themselves to actors. In densely-constructed paragraphs Cave discusses actors' performances during the fifteen years of his survey. but he also compares those perfonnances with past performances of Gielgud, Richardson, Whitelaw, and others. Cave is obviously in love with the actors' art; his comments on John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier are brilliant summaries. Cave's own critical and moral values are implicit. In analyzing Storey's Home, for example (set in a mental asylum), Cave recognizes to the full Storey's attempt to convey the sense of genuine communication and communion the two principal characters achieve against tremendous odds. The same is true of virtually all the plays the author treats...