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books and company Peter Stein: Germany's Leading Theatre Director. Michael Patterson. Cambridge University Press, 186 pp., $32.50 (cloth); $10.95 (paper). Stein is surely one of the great contemporary directors, yet scant coverage of his productions appears in publication here (one exception is Yale Theater's 1977 issue on him), and if It weren't for the few films of his productions available, only those able to travel to Germany could be acquainted with his work. Patterson's volume, therefore, is a welcome event because it follows Stein's career from his first professional production, Edward Bond's Saved in 1967, upto his 1980 Oresteia, from Munich, Bremer, and Zurich, to the Schaubuhne am Halleschen Ufer in West Berlin where Stein and his company have resided the last dozen years. Patterson weaves his narrative around the comments of Stein, actors (Bruno Ganz, Edith Clever, Sabine Andreas, et al.), dramaturgs (Dieter Sturm, Botho Strauss), and German critics who intelligently examine the productions. One of the most notable sections in the book is the chapter documenting Stein's famous production of Peer Gynt which rethought the political and aesthetic implications of the play for contemporary bourgeois audiences. Stein's work on the many classics he's done over the years is a model for how to revision drama in an anti-classical age. Patterson is for the most part a chronicler of Stein's history in the theatre; he doesn't question his subject's intentions or results but presents the facts in a straight-forward, chronological fashion, rather dryly. Nevertheless , one must be grateful for his introduction to the Schaubuhne which, by any standards, in any age, is a great theatre, and Stein a remarkable theatre mind. This book is part of Cambridge University Press's "Directors in Perspective" series which also includes new books on Ingmar Bergman and Max Reinhardt, with many others in preparation. Bonnie Marranca American Humorists, 1800-1950. Edited by Stanley Trachtenberg. Gale Research, 2 vols., xiv + 705 pp., $140.00 (cloth). Costumes Through the Ages. Rizzoli International Pubis., 256 pp., 1,500 color Illus., $45.00 (cloth). 130 British Theatre Directory 1982. Compiled with assistance of the British Theatre Institute. John Offors, 575 pp., $23.95 (cloth). BritishAlternative Theatre Directory 1982. Edited by Catherine Itzin. John Offord, 398 pp., $19.95 (paper). Who remembers Potash and Perlmutter? Who remembers their creator, Montague Glass? Trachtenberg's two-volume survey of American humorists at least has not forgotten Glass and his comic stage characters. Glass's plays about these two New York businessmen-flavored with the language and intrigues of the garment trade-were popular on both sides of the Atlantic into the 1930s. Glass is only one of the playwrights included in this useful addition to the Gale series, the Dictionary of Literary Biography. Others include George Ade, Robert Benchley, John Brougham, Ring Lardner, Anita Loos, Dorothy Parker. S. J. Perlman, and Mark Twain. Clarence Day is one of a number of humorists whose works have been adapted for the stage, facts noted in the biographies. They are both chronological and analytical, generally offering brief but effective portraits of the subjects and their works. Lists of works by and about them are included , as well as the location of major collections of the humorists' papers and publications. Even William Faulkner is included for his wry, ironic humor. For the theatre historian as for the costume designer, Costumes Through the Ages will provide a valued reference. There is no text; the book reproduces the famous Munich Bilderbogen, 125 sheets of historic costume plates, issued from 1850 onward. In 1893, these were collected into a twovolume book, Zur Geschichte der Costume. Rizzoli's handsome facsimile has re-ordered the plates chronologically. The British publisher, John Offord, issues a number of theatre-related books in addition to these standard annuals. (All can be purchased in dollars from Offord's American outlet: 9200 Sunset Blvd., Suite 823, Los Angeles, CA. 90069.) In the absence of such illustrated London theatre annuals as Theatre World, which died in the mid-1960s, The British Theatre Directory offers such helpful information as a 1981 calendar of events, Michael Billington's summary of the...

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