American Theatre: A Chronicle of Comedy and Drama, 1969-2000 (review)

Thomas S. Hischak's American Theatre: A Chronicle of Comedy and Drama, 1969-2000, is essentially what the title implies, though the book makes no attempt to move outside New York City.In the preface the editor tells us:"All Broadway non- musical productions are included, as well as virtually all Off-Broadway entries and a representative selection of Off-Off-Broadway offerings. Each season (June 1 to May 31) is covered chronologically, jumping back and forth between the three venues . . ." (v). Despite the subtitle's clear parameters, the absence of musicals is problematic in an encyclopedia of American theatre. Musicals have become increasingly important to a tourist-dominated Boadway. The less than satisfying rationale is proffered in the preface, which notes that the book is structured in essentially the same "manner and format" (v) as the first three volumes in the series, compiled by the noted scholar Gerald Bordman. This book offers the same sucesses and failures as the previous ones as well as an additional problem.

First, major successes. American Theatre, like the earlier volumes, represents a heroic compilation effort and a fine place to begin one's research or to take a quick look at a play or a season in the New York theatre during the last three decades of the twentieth century. Oxford and Hischak should be congratulated for continuing the series. But, in a way, the successes are also failures endemic to this kind of encyclopedic book. Let me concentrate on one: American Theatre, and books like it, are indeed only places to begin. The very complexity of the task, combined with page limitations, makes it impossible to go into much depth. In any case, a compiler cannot be expected to see everything and must depend in part on reviews, which sometimes leads to vagueness or out-and-out error.

But vagueness and error are probably the least of it. Most troubling is the tendency of all such encyclopedic books finally to hew to a traditional line about shows, whole seasons, eras, and, indeed, about a form. In his preface, Hischak does make an important point about the increasing complexity of theatre in New York in the last third of the twentieth century. He notes that it has became truly various, that Broadway was joined by other types of theatre, and that a picture of New York theatre depends upon the examination of all three. Yet, Hischak more or less stops his explanation there and declines to take up his own implication that a sea change has taken place and that more explanation might be called for. He papers over the problem a second time in the epilogue, simply saying there that, as the twentieth century ends, theatre has become "diverse and unmanageable" and cannot be "fit into neat categories" (462). Why, then, continue to write about Broadway "and others?"

In the last decades of the twentieth century, the lines have, indeed, become blurred between a burgeoning Off and Off-Off Broadway and an obviously declining Broadway theatre. If, moreover, one were to look farther, one could profitably talk about such important influences on the theatre as movies, television, and economics. But Hischak has not chosen to theorize about the recent changes in the New York theatre in any detail or to use new categories in the body of his book. Nor, I suppose, is he required to; the traditional information is there. But to organize a whole book about theatre this way may no longer be relevant since it implies a hierarchy with Broadway at the top that is increasingly debatable. This is true throughout, but a case in point is the l990-1991 season (312-25), in which Broadway, while it plays an increasingly small part, is still presented as the bellweather. Yet, by that time it may no longer so clearly have been. (And, incidentally, there is...