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Reviewed by:
  • The Routledge Companion to Directors' Shakespeare
  • David S. Schneider
The Routledge Companion to Directors' Shakespeare. Edited by John Russell Brown. New York: Routledge, 2008; pp. 608. $153.00 cloth.

British professor John Russell Brown, author of various books on the Bard, has complemented his editorial oeuvre and filled a canonical void with this extensive compendium of articles on recent directors of Shakespeare. As with his Oxford Illustrated History of the Theatre, Brown has collocated an impressive and diverse array of contributors (including, again, Peter Holland), the value of whose perspectives comes through both their relationships (for example, Philip Breen was a former assistant director to Terry Hands) and their credentials (Karen Fricker is a student of and frequent publisher on Robert Lepage).

The subjects of this unique tome are thirty-one Victorian, modern, and contemporary theatrical directors who either devoted their career to the production of Shakespeare or whose Shakespearean productions have been of particular consequence, as judged by Brown, in theatrical history. Curiously, the book contains entries for only three female directors, including Julie Taymor; perhaps this is due to the current availability of more specialized works such as Ms-Directing Shakespeare and Women Direct Shakespeare in America. Unsurprisingly, seventeen of the thirty-one directors anthologized are British, though representative of different time periods and companies—from Shakespeare's Globe to Cheek by Jowl to the Stratford Festival. Three Americans, three Germans, two Japanese, two Italians, and one director apiece from Sweden, Austria, France, and Canada round out the field. The inclusion of many of these artists, such as Peter Hall and Joseph Papp, was fairly predictable given their contributions, but I was surprised to find John Barton excluded from those distinguished (Brown explains that Hall's style was similar enough to Barton's to allow an entry on Hall to represent both men [xi]).

In a brief though beneficial introduction, Brown details the process of selecting subjects and authors and defends the alphabetical organization of the work. While some readers may have preferred the inclusion of more directors in the book, its already hefty price would certainly have escalated with additional chapters, as the editor notes. His choice to order the essays alphabetically by the last name of the director, rather than chronologically, means that specific entries in this 608-page work may be found with ease, and his choice to forgo figures leaves ample room for extended written discussion of each director.

The relative cultural diversity of the directors and, perhaps more importantly, the diversity of their experiences, influences, styles, processes, work, and impact provide a critical juxtaposition by which directorial methodology as applied to Shakespeare's texts may be compared and contrasted. The collection also provides for the interested reader a means of categorizing plays, experiences, processes, and influences common to some or all of the included directors, and, in some cases, a means of observing the chronology of development in the field. For example, the progression from Peter Hall to Terry Hands in the artistic directorship of the Royal Shakespeare Company may be traced in this book, despite the alphabetical organization.

While the diversity of both subjects and authors is one of the most engaging facets of the work, this conglomeration—at times a bit of a style and content hodgepodge—creates some complications as well. Most notably, differences from chapter to chapter not merely in style, but in organization, mean that the information discussed varies widely, leaving it in some instances difficult to fully compare or contrast directors' processes and styles. For example, while each chapter addresses in some way the Shakespearean productions of its subject, Michael Raab's chapter on Peter Zadek provides a narrative and chronological biography, but only cursory discourse on process and approach. Conversely, Kevin Ewert's chapter on Michael Langham not only scrutinizes his process, but also compares and contrasts it with that of Tyrone Guthrie. Different readers may find different chapters more valuable.

Tone varies widely by chapter as well. While criticism of directors or their styles generally is balanced with warmth (such as Holland's critique of Hall's "rules" [153]), some of the articles, like those on Joseph Papp and Peter Stein, are less...

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