Russian Drama From Its Beginnings to the Age of Pushkin by Simon Karlinsky (review)

We Can Always Call Them Bulgarians Kaier Curtin Alyson Publications; 342 pp.; $18.95 (cloth) Curtin's study, subtitled "the emergence of lesbians and gay men on the American stage," would appear to be an invaluable contribution to theatre history and gay studies. Slogging through decades of bilious prose and tabloid reviews, as well as the homophobic, if higher-toned, opinions of our earlier literate critics (Nathan, Mantle, Atkinson), he documents every play with covertly or overtly gay and lesbian characters to reach New York. It is a rich and myopic tale, studded with the stupefying euphemisms of the century 's hack journalists-"shadows," "bedizened men friends," "a horrible thing of soul leprosy," "the girls and boys of Nethersex Village." Bulgarians (a celebrated Goldwynism) emerges as an archive with plot synopses and scant analysis. Part of the problem lies in the source material: often the only information to pick through is The New York Herald Tribune and star bios. In this way, Clive Barnes goes on record as a reputed Shakespearean scholar and Curtin cites the Encyclopedia Britannica with a straight face. More of a problem is the author's cloudy intention. Is Bulgarians to be read as theatre history, social history, literary analysis, or merely a collection of entertaining trivia? Ideally, one shouldn't have to choose, but a scattershot treatment of all areas undermines his authority. Bulgarians is questionable-as scholarship and as gossip. Gay men and women indeed emerged onstage, but why? And as what? The book provides no backdrop, draws few connections. Curtin has begun the work on this topic and left the expansion to others. James Magruder Russian Drama From Its Beginnings to the Age of Pushkin Simon Karlinsky University of California Press; 357 pp.; $42.50 (cloth), $12.95 (paper) Karlinsky recounts in his preface that friends and colleagues, even Russian specialists, were skeptical about his project. I met with the same reaction while working on this review. The commonly-held idea is that Russian drama before the mid-nineteenth century was slavishly derivative of the French; only Fonvizin, Griboedov, Pushkin, and Gogol, in this view, are worth mentioning. This fascinating volume should do much to change that stereotype. For there was an Enlightenment project afoot in the theatre of eighteenthcentury Russia stressing rationalism, education, and progress. And if its roots were quite disparate from those of neoclassical Western European art-because they were forcibly planted in a soil that had never known a fertilizing renaissance-nevertheless its real achievements were admirable: the era's unsung (often even despised) Sumarokovs and Shakhovskoys, 93 Kniazhnins and Khmelnitskys laid the groundwork for later triumphs by Pushkin, Gogol, even Chekhov, and also contributed significant work of their own. Karlinsky focuses on the century, from 1730-1830, in which secular drama swept toward a rationality apotheosized in the neoclassical tragedies, sentimental dramas, prose comedies, magic operas and, especially, the verse comedies of young Pushkin's generation. Not only does Karlinsky manage to animate these individual texts; he also tells, with an ease and charm that befit his subject, the story of the vigorous literary life, with its movements, institutions, role models, and rivalries, that came to find its lifeblood in the theatre. Part of this story also involves Karlinsky's recuperation, along the way, of plays and playwrights from the distortions of ideological criticism, both political and aesthetic. While Karlinsky's lively literary history adds a great deal to our knowledge of this period, it is unfortunate for theatre studies that the history of the productions themselves concerns him only tangentially. One wishes now for as detailed and lively a volume on eighteenth-century theatres and acting styles. Sally Banes Turn-of-the-Century Cabaret: Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Cracow, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Zurich Harold B. Segel Columbia University Press, 418 pp.; $30.00 (cloth) Readers now have Harold Segel to thank for setting down with detached authority cabaret's detour-filled history. He makes a deliberately anarchic form manageable, yet never forgets that cabaret can only be defined in terms of its variations. His subject demands such a flexible historian, one able to start over in each new city and assess how its artists reinvented cabaret...