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BOOK REVIEWS 409 able information as well as important bibliographical sources for several little known works. PATRICIA W. O'CONNOR University of Cincinnati BRITISH THEATRE 1950-70, by Arnold P. Hinchcliffe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974. 205 pp. £3.50. DRAMA IN BRITAIN 1964-1973, by J.W. Lambert. London: Longman Group, 1974.80 , pp.,5Op. British Theatre actually has four subjects, though they are run together as Hinchcliffe has tried to make his study a continuous narrative. Eighty-eight of his 200 pages summarize the work of five dramatists - Pinter, Osborne, Beckett, Arden and Wesker. These pages cover familiar ground quickly. With Osborne, Hinchcliffe leans too much on other critics, as he can approach the plays only by way of the essays of Worth, Raymond Williams, Dyson and Banham. The overview can be shaky: he does not communicate Arden's restless shifts in position through the sixties. Wesker's Friends, with nearly three pages, has the longest comment for anyone text, perhaps an attempt at originality! Second, the book gives breathless guided tours of about a dozen other authors , with two to five pages each, from which we learn that Hinchcliffe is unsympathetic to Hampton and Stoppard, unable to see their appeal. Peter Shaffer and Joe Orton are among those not lucky enough to make the dozen. The conclusions are usually bland, e.g. "Even if Mercer is, as yet, not as impressive as the dramatists of the New Wave, his impact is greater than most of his contemporaries " (p. 149); "Wood's lively use of language marks him out as an interesting dramatist" (p. 165). Third, an attempt is made to point out antecedents and parallels outside Britain. Chapter 1 summarizes Brecht and Beckett - influences which were not marked until 1955-56 - but absurdly the rest of the twentieth century French scene - Jarry, Artaud, and all that - figures only in Chapter 6. That Miller and Tennessee Williams loomed large in Britain in 1950 is unmentioned, but at the end the avant-garde proves to be Hair and Dionysus in 69 (never seen in Britain!). Fourth, spread through the book is a token effort to live up to the broad title , with a lot of names of the star actors of the mid-century, a list of plays directed by Peter Brook, a short appendix on the National Theatre, and a few names and dates for the organization of the Royal Court and Royal Shakespeare Company. Hinchcliffe looks uncertain as to the audience he is serving. The reader who needs the potted biography of Brecht on p. 3 is going to be bewildered on p. 7, where it is assumed he has seen Sean Kelly's set for Oliver and Gaskill's National Theatre production of Mother Courage, and on p. 12, where Jan Kott's country is mentioned but not named. Hinchcliffe throws Peguy, St Augustine, Hauptmann and Luigi Chiarelli into his first chapter as well, to make it more demanding. The writing is frequently dull, and at times downright bad, e.g. "Among producers Peter Brook and Joan Littlewood must be regarded as the most positively influenced of stage directors" (p. 8); "There is a failure to provide a strong central character which would unify the playas Jimmy and Archie had" (p. 64). The incorrect dates, which may charitably be taken as misprints, are irritat- 410 BOOK REVIEWS ing: Gates of Summer should be 1956, not 1965 (p. 27), Plays for England was 1962, not 1963 (p. 55), The Friends was 1970, not 1971 (p. 92), Roots was 1959, not 1958 (p. 93), and H was 1969, not 1968 (p. 165). Sometimes no date is given, and if Hinchcliffe wants to use L'Anm?e derniere a Marienbad as the French equivalent to the youthful energy found at the Royal Court in 1956 - which he does! (p. 46) - we need the date of the film. The book has no index, the bibliography is very random, and references are sloppy or non-existent. The footnote to "Atticus" and a date is comprehensible only to Sunday Times readers. Most of his allusions to authors' comments are not footnoted at all, e.g. "Whiting admired both Pinter and Arden" (p. 29...

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