Pinter in Play: Critical Strategies and the Plays of Harold Pinter by Susan Hollis Merritt (review)

Book Reviews 359 these three. For example, in trying to establish the cultural background to Arden's early plays, Marianne Stenbaek writes: "Socialism and a greater attention to the workingclass had made inroads throughout the twentieth century in England, but the country was still ruled and run by the Establishment until after W.W. II." Catherine Graham is right in pointing out that D'Arey and Arden are trying to cultivate a "non-traditional" audience, but she paints herself into a comer trying to defend the length of The NonStop Connolly Show: "When the professional critics complain of exhaustion induced by such a lengthy presentation, we must consider the possibility that working-class audiences may construct quite different meanings from the same physical sensations." She misses the point that the playwrights were trying to create a unique theatrical event associated with an Easter weekend, more akin to a festival than a production with a run. In general, the essays try to make the case for Arden and D'Arcy through lavishing extravagant praise; for example, Marianne Stenbaek claims that "Arden, almost alone among British playwrights in the fifties and sixties, combines literary and theatrical elements in an exciting and complementary manner." Similarly, Kayla Wiggins describes Arden's verse drama as "a form of theatre which challenges all the assumptions of language, reality, and experience." These comments only undermine the authority of the critics. Arden and D'Arcy are important not only for what they have wrillen, but for how their work has prefigured and paralleled the work of others. The Island of the Mighty and The Non-Stop Connolly Show in many ways paved the way for David Edgar's Nicholas Nicklehy. Edgar's Entertaining Strangers belongs to the type of community theater explored by D'Arcy and Arden some twenty years earlier. Arden's break from realism and his use of the conventions of the Elizabethan and Jacobean theater laid the groundwork for the plays of Edward Bond, Howard Brenton, and Howard Barker. D'Arcy's and Arden's abandonment of established theatrical venues helped point the way for John McGrath and his wife, Elizabeth MacLennan. While this volume is important for trying to rekindle critical interest in Arden and D'Arcy, its weaknesses point out the need for a more balanced appraisal of their work that covers not only their plays, but the non-literary events they have staged and sponsored as well. PAUL HAXO, SAN FRANCISCO SUSAN HOLLIS MERRITT. Pinter in Play: Critical Strategies and the Plays of Harold Pinter. Durham. North Carolina and London: Duke Universily Press 1990 (PB 1995) Pp. 343· $17·95 (PB). Susan Hollis Merritt's Pinter in Play: Critical Strategies and the Plays of Harold Pinter attempts three difficult tasks simultaneously: an overView of Pinter criticism from its beginnings to the present day; an investigation of the motives, practices, and discourse of academic and non-academic critics in general; and a polemic urging a shift from "strategy"-based critical thinking to collaborative modes of critical Book Reviews endeavor. The book does the fIrst two things very well. The third raises more questions than it answers, but perhaps not in the manner that Merritt intends. Yet, reading Merritt on scholarship and publishing can make the professional academic more than a bit self~ reflexive about his or her own process and product - and that in itself is probably a good thing. Pinter in Play is divided into three large sections. The first, "Perspectives on Pinter's Critical Evolution," charts many of the defining attributes of Pinter criticism (including. principally, the issue of "Semantic Uncertainty" in the plays) through their transfonnations as part of either "fashion" or "progress" in critical discourse. The second section, which investigates the work of nearly every prominent Pinter scholar, and some olhers as well, centers on five categories of understanding: Themes, Rituals, Games, Fantasies, and Dreams. Merritt here surveys the "resilient concerns" of Pinter scholars: mastery of material through "form and sttucture"; the relation of form and content; uses of "reality" and "fantasy" in the plays; linguistic traditions, symbolism, and ambiguity; comedy or "use of comedy"; characterization; and "thearricality" throughout the work (64). Merritt describes ,as "deplorable" the "repression" of...