Yury Lyubimov at the Taganka Theatre 1964-1994 by Birgit Beumers (review)

332 Book Reviews The author pays particular attention to Mrozek's formative years and the influence of socialist realism on his world-view and poetics. She analyzes Mrozek's early journalistic articles, jeuiffero1ls, satires, cartoons and theatre reviews - the material which until now has rarely been discussed and whose importance to Mrozek's literary career has never been adequately acknowledged. Stephan's careful look at these early works sheds a new light on the origin of the playwright's thematic interests. on which she focuses most of her attention throughout the book, as well as on his stylistic and formal choices. Following the playwright's own evaluation of his experiences of Stalinism, Stephan sees his socialist realist practices not as an unimportant aesthetic aberration but as an intrinsic and influential part of his literary career, thus contributing to a more comprehensive interpretation of the Polish post-war theater, already exercised by such critics as J6zef Kelera and Marta Fik. Stephan's book, unlike the two other recent studies, subscribes to the prevalent reading of Mrozek's early plays in the West through the lens of the Theater of the Absurd, while recognizing the specificity of its Eastern European version. Her interpretation of Mrozek's works written abroad also reconfinns, this time thematically, the East-West dichotomy and explicates it through both intellectual and actual biographies of the playwright. However, it is the Polish cultural and political context that interests her the most. To it, the author adds well-documented responses of Polish and foreign theaters to Mrozek's playwriting. Among the latter the German reception is privileged, but Stephan also pays attention to the emerging Russian interest in and stagings of Mrozek's plays. She accounts for the major reasons for his successes and failures on stage at home and abroad. The book balances the factual with the analytical. The author, a Polish-American scholar, provides ample explanation for what otherwise might have been obscure to a non-Polish reader. Sometimes this approach leads to unnecessary repetitions, but it assures clarity. The analytical parts of Transcending the Absurd grow out of skillful and brief summaries of the works under consideration. In addition to Mrozek's articles and prose, Stephan deals with twenty-six out of his thirty-six plays. This ambitious task has set limits to the textual exegeses - they suggest rather than fully explore possible interpretations of the analyzed works. Nonetheless. the author completes her tasks and creates a well-developed literary portrait of a complex writer - of his thematic obsessions , his formal experiments and his philosophy of an and life. TAMARA TROJANOWSKA, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO BIRGIT BEUMERS. Yury LYlIbimov at the Taganka Theatre 1¢4-1994. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers 1997. pp.361, iliusIraled. $ 126.00; $42.00, paperback. Yury Lyubimov celebrated his eightieth birthday with the premiere of his latest production , an adaptation of Dostoevsky'S The Brothers Karamazov, at his Taganka theatre on September 30, 1997. Both in the (former) Soviet Union and abroad, Lyubimov Book Reviews 333 has become a legend in his own time. primarily because of his uncanny talent to irritate and yet appease the Soviet regime with his unorthodox productions and theatrical innovations . In this context, Birgit Beumers' Yury Lyubimov at the Taganka Theatre is a timely. meticulously researched, and well-documented work, with useful appendices. As the title suggests, Beurners focuses on Lyubimov's work at the Taganka theatre: only two pages in the relatively short introduction chapter (nine pages) are devoted to his previous work. The rest of this chapter briefly explains and contextualizes the developments of his practices and theories a l the Taganka. While Lyubimov often attracted attention because of the political implications of his work. Beumers attempts "to characterise Yury Lyubimov through his artistic work rather than by probing the ·scandals...• asserting that "Lyubimov's creative potential may have been strengthened at certain points by the circumstances under which he worked. but it was never enriched" (xv). Accordingly, aside from relatively general contextual remarks, the bulk of the book consists of detailed descriptions of Lyubimov's productions at the Taganka. The book is divided into four pans, which bridge the three thematic phases of Lyubimov 's work...