Pirandello’s Theater: The Recovery of the Modern Stage for Dramatic Art by Anne Paolucci (review)

272 Comparative Drama drama in that city; nevertheless, they indeed do limit the kinds of ques­ tions that we may ask. CLIFFORD DAVIDSON Western Michigan University Anne Paolucci. Pirandello's Theater: The Recovery of the Modern Stage for Dramatic Art. (Crosscurrents/Modern Critiques Series.) Carbon­ dale: Southern illinois University Press, 1974. Pp. xiii + 159. $6.95. Pirandello's Theater by Anne Paolucci (in the Crosscurrents/Modern Critiques series) is a serious effort, as the subtitle indicates, at "The Re­ covery of the Modern Stage for Dramatic Art." By this, she meant, I gather, to write about the plays in the theater. And she starts off well enough, indeed, by linking Pirandello, especially his Six Characters in Search of An Author, with the famous 1923 Paris production by George and Ludmilla Pitoeff and their troupe: "Their success with the play raised them at once to a place of first rank, even as it established over­ night an international reputation for their Sicilian playwright." One would suppose, from the first pages of Professor Paolucci's book, that she intended to follow through and deal with the plays as pieces for the theater, showing how producers have discovered through their stag­ ings the inherent dramatic nature of these challenging plays. Such indeed her statement (p. 6) leads us to suspect: "Through an analysis of their dramatic action . . . we hope to identify the dramatic excellence of these plays." And indeed Paolucci brings to bear some insights into the meanings of the plays she treats. In Liola ( 1916), Pirandello's Sicilian pastoral, she finds (despite the fact that the play is ''the most lyrical" of his works) all the Pirandellian dramatic themes. And in a neat scheme which has much philosophical awareness; she traces these themes through two parallel series of plays. In the Chapter "From Person to Nonperson: The 'Theater' Plays," she finds expressed Pirandello's central concepts of his theatrical craft. Here in Six Characters and others is "his driving dramatic obsession: the destruction of personality through self-decep­ tion." I suppose I should begin at once with my reservation; the colon does not seem to me the appropriate punctuation here. "The destruc­ tion of personality through self-deception" seems to me a "philosophi­ cal" rather than a "dramatic" obsession. True, Paolucci will go ahead to assert that "the well-made plot cannot serve any longer" such an obses­ sion. As a result, "the setting" for Each in His Own Way "gives the im­ pression of a surrealistic painting." The "theater plays," she proposes, "shatter stage convention in order to force us to look into the magic mirror of art." So far, clear enough: the well-made play is not the ap­ propriate vehicle for Pirandellian themes. But, then, what does Pirandello's dramatic art consist of? Paolucci Reviews 273 (on p. 47) rejects "the simplistic notion of a relativist philosophy, which has so often been called upon to explain." She says, instead, that the "six . . . are the elusive moment of life." Quite so. But then she refers to Italian critic Bontempelli who "has aptly defined" the Pirandellian theater: Pirandello's figures "are the victims of a clear and restless consciousness of nothingness which surrounds man • . . victims of an attitude which has replaced the vital need for rules with 'it is so (if you think it is) '." Bontempelli's aptness strikes me as nothing so much as a restatement of relativism. Again, I wonder: where is the dramatic art? Maybe the answer is what Paolucci calls (p. 53) "the Pirandellian trademark-the mirror gone crazy." This concept, "the theater-as-mirror," is employed "on a grand scale" in Tonight We Improvise. Surely we will now get to "dramatic art." The ingredients? The script. The interruptions. The notion, "life's a stage." And the stage itself "a distorted, shattered mirror of life, full of imperfections and impurities." But, here we are at the end of the chapter on the "theater" plays: "Like Shakespeare, Pirandello mov:es easily inla multifaceted kind of symbolism which, in its rich suggestions is � Dantesque." Come, come Professor Paolucci, what does all this vw::lif;: age mean? "The audience (and the reader) is at every moment;at·thf h� of...