The Theatrical Instinct: Nikolai Evreinov and the Russian Theatre of the Early Twentieth Century by Sharon Marie Carnicke (review)

Book Reviews Hapgood relate to all those Alexanders in EGBDF or to the play and re-play of his Polish docudrama. The shift Kelly detects, from parody to satire, also suggests a move from indeterminate themes, in the early plays, to deconstructed characterization, from EGBDF onwards. Kelly's thesis opens up new angles on Stoppard, but those require a subtler vision and closer acquaintance with the social ambience of recent British drama than this book offers. ANTHONY JENKINS. UNIVERSITY OF VlcrORIA SHARON MARIE CARNICKE. The Theatricallnsrillct: Nikolai Evreinov and the Russian ... Theatre of the Early Twentieth Century. New York: Peter Lang 1989· Pp. 247; - 'illustrated. $45.50. No doubt, Russian playwright, director, theoretician Nikolai Evreinov possessed a sharp mind and biting wit. Indeed. Evreinov's nasty little satire of excessive theatrical realism. The Fourth Wall, is one of the few plays I've read as an adult that made me laugh aloud. Ahhough Evreinov was clearly an influential figure in Silver and post-Silver Age theatre, I'm not entirely convinced he is as unique or significant as Sharon Camicke suggests in The Theatrical Instinct: Nikolai Evreinov and the Russian Theatre of the Early Twentieth Century. Nonetheless, as one more example of a Russian theatre artist who, like so many of his contemporaries, has been overshadowed by the Stanislavski legend, he is certainly a figure with whom Western scholars and theatre practitioners should become better acquainted. As Camicke points out, Evreinov's star began to rise at a time when the hegemony of the Moscow Art Theatre, with its emphasis on realistic texts and production .methods, compelled most Russian theatre artists to position themselves along a continuum in relationship to the MAT. Evreinov, and those among his contemporaries , ~ho appreciated pure theatricality, must have been thoroughly dismayed by Stanislav- ,;. ski's confession that he hated "the theatre in theatre." It is not, perhaps, merely cbincidence that Evreinov's first important theoretical statements bega.n to appear in 1905, just after the divisive "krizis teatra" peaked with the furor over Meierhold's highly stylized productions of symbolist drama at Vera Kommissarzhevskaia's Dramaticheskii Theatre. Evreinov's principal contribution to perfonnance theory is the concept of "teatral'nost," which Carnicke defines as "the theatrical instinct." Like Oscar Wilde, who suggested that life should imitate art, Evreinov devoted much of his energy to erasing distinctions between theatre and life. For artists like Evreinov, Wilde, and Alfred larry, among others, this did not mean reproduction of realistic minutiae on stage; rather life itself was a drama that must be directed, popUlated with appropriate characters, and suitably costumed. For this reason, Evreinov was viewed by some as a megalomaniac, an egotistical crank whose principal talent was self-promotion, and by others as a genuine theatrical genius. As Camicke observes, he was one of the first 586 Book Reviews to examine the fundamental nature of the art of theatre. His life and work reflect a singleminded devotion to exploring the proper relationships between art and reality. and between spectacle and spectator; his plays, theoretical writings, and work as a director, reflect these concerns. They were manifested in productions as diverse as the hariequinade, A Merry Death, and the mass spectacle. The Srorming of the Winter Palace. and in the intensely theatrical persona Evreinov created for himself. In The Theatrical Instinct, Carnicke spends litrle lime on Evreinov the direclOr, preferring to focus primarily on intersections between his theoretical pronouncements and the plays, especially A Merry Death (Veselaia Smert) and The Main Thing (Samoe Glavnoe). The first two chapters, devoted mostly to background infonnation, review Evreinov's professional development and position him in the complex Silver Age theatrical milieu. In the third and fourth chapters, Carnicke turns to explication of Evreinov's theory as it was articulated in The Theatre as Such (Teatr kak rakovoi) and an Introduction to Monodrama (Vvedenie v monodrama), These are the most interesting chapters because they reveal a seriousness of purpose that is often not readily apparent in the plays - witty, sardonic attacks on contemporary theatrical practice which tend towards didacticism, Camicke's discussion of monodrama is particularly interesting because, noting that «identification is conditioned by gender," she introduces , albeit brieny, a feminist...