Historical Dictionary of Russian Theater (review)

{ 239 } BOOK REV IEWS over every word. Chagall and Granovsky fled to the West, thereby saving their lives, while Mikhoels remained, steadfast in his endeavors to bring a new and freedom-loving culture to his people. Eventually, he was stripped of his artistic freedom and murdered by Stalin’s henchmen. It is gratifying to note that the Russian government has finally released the archival materials that made it possible for Harshav to thoroughly research a subject that had been long forgotten. The history of the Moscow Yiddish Theatre has been stored behind locked doors for far too long. —CARY R. LEITER Wayne State University \ Historical Dictionary of Russian Theater. By Laurence Senelick. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2007. li + 553 pp. $110.00 cloth. In the rarified world of American scholarship on Russian drama and theatre, undoubtedly no researcher has published as prolifically as Laurence Senelick. The expertise arising from his dozen books—on subjects like Russian dramatic theory, serf theatre, cabaret, émigré theatre, and especially Chekhov— has served him well in the task of writing pithy entries on actors, directors, designers , playwrights, plays, companies, concepts, and more, corresponding to a chronology that extends from the skomorokhi in 1068 to highlights of the 2005 Moscow theatre season. Yes, this is a formulaic reference work with its requisite chronology, introductory essay, dictionary entries, bibliographic essay, and bibliographic entries grouped by category. And I must own up to having written, with James Fisher, a later volume in Scarecrow’s series of historical dictionaries of theatre. Thus it is with particular admiration for Senelick’s solo labor (knowing how the list of entries to be researched and written seemed endless, even when my task was shared) that I applaud his ability to transcend the mandated format and make the work his very own. This is not only a good solid collection of data but also a stylish and witty presentation of it. The virtues of this work are its utter reliability and the fact that it is a book worth reading for pleasure, not just for consulting randomly. Senelick seems to have dealt with the daunting prospect of condensing tons of material into brief, discrete entries by the same means as Félix Fénéon in his 1906 news snippets now published as Novels in Three Lines. Both authors pull the reader into { 240 } BOOK REV IEWS the hint of a larger story by providing just enough—with flair—to stimulate the imagination and to satisfy. Among the dozens I noted, here are a couple of examples: “His rivalry with fellow character actor Mikhail Ianshin, even vying for protracted applause,reached such a pitch that Minister of Culture Ekaterina Furtseva had to intervene”(Gribov 150).“While playing Aleksandr Ostrovskii’s Vasilisa Melent’eva, in despair at seeing her lover in the audience with another woman, she poisoned herself on stage” (Kadmina 171). “His technical mastery was such that he could produce exactly four tears in this last role, and he insisted that they be properly lit” (Pevtsov 293). The study of Soviet theatre always carries the fascination of the horrible. The revelation that comes through this book is how pervasive were the persecutions of artists and the censorship of plays and productions even before the Soviet era. According to my informal tally of all entries (making no distinction between Russian and Soviet), at least fifty-seven entries refer to artists who emigrated or were expelled from the country, fifty-five entries signal specific bans or repressions, fifteen entries name artists who were arrested (with most of them serving prison time), and eleven entries name artists who were executed. The preface claims “students and the general public” as the volume’s target readership, “not necessarily the expert” (xi). While non-experts will certainly get good value here, much is likely to go over their heads. For example, the Okhlopkov entry refers to “his carceral Hamlet (1953)” (281), but there is no explanation here—nor is there an entry on Shakespeare on the Russian stage—to explain what is better known as the “Iron Curtain Hamlet” or even to suggest why there were so many productions of Hamlet following the death of Stalin. Given the...