Musical Comedy in America by Cecil Smith and Glenn Litton (review)

well that one wonders if we are not missing a lot of theatrical excitement iri our current miasma of minimality and banal stage realism. (One also recalls the famous Beerbohm Tree Midsummer Night's Dream early in this century, in which Tree had real fireflies, real running water, and real rabbits in his Athenian forest. Booth notes the gradual attraction to scenic design of distinguished English painters, at first aloof from melodrama. Shakespeare productions with finicky archeological reconstruction were effective bait for some noted artists. Victorian spectaculars were not designed merely to please the populace, they seem to have delighted the London and provincial theatre public at all levels of sophistication, as Booth stresses. Henry Irving's 1885 Faust is discussed in detail, as is Tree's 1910 Henry V1II. Booth's style is anecdotal and direct, making these forgotten productions come to life. Patterson is a less lively writer, but no less interesting in the amount and kind of production detail and anecdote he provides. He is also intent on establishing the philosophical, technical, and social forces which generated the German theatre revolution, culminating in Expressionism and its expressions, Abstractionist Theatre and Primitivist Theatre, as well as the later developments of Piscator's theatre and Brecht's elaboration of Epic Theatre. Major plays in production, such as Kaiser's From Morning till Midnight and Toller's Transfiguration, are given close attention, as are Piscator's Hoppla, Such Is Life!, and Brecht's Man Equals Man. One very valuable feature of Patterson's book is a chronology of important play productions from 1900 up to the Nazi seizure of power. Glenn Loney Musical Comedy in America. Cecil Smith and Glenn Litton. Theatre Arts Books, 367 pp., $14.95 (paper). This is a book in two parts. The first, by Cecil Smith, is a reprint of his 1950 edition of the same title and covers musical comedy from The Black Crook to South Pacific. The second part, by Glenn Litton, is a 1981 updating, covering musicals from The King and I to Sweeney Todd. Neither author was nor is a theatre historian so this is far from being a scholarly examination . Both parts of this book are rather an enthusiastic labor of love, full of inspired description, value judgements, and commentary that compel the reader to plunge ahead. As such it is an entertaining and fairly comprehensive introduction to musical comedy. Where it fails, however, is in its attempt to be complete. No one work is ever dealt with for more than a few pages. Yet in these summaries form, content, casts, production notes, and some socio-political commentary does emerge. Smith and Litton (who tries in his part to duplicate Smith's witty and assertive style) instigate you to go find out more for yourself, especially about musicals of the twenties and thirties. What this updated volume is, then, is a lively narrative history that 141 probably ought to be designated a classic. Michael Earley Understudies: Theatre and Sexual Politics. Michelene Wandor. Methuen, 88 pp., $5.95 (paper). This slender book offers an overview of the origins, tendencies and phases of polemical theatre in Britain in the 1970s. Although the works of feminist groups (Women's Theatre Group, Women's Company, Monstrous Regiment), and gay groups (Gay Sweatshop, Gay Street Theatre Group) are included, Wandor, a feminist and playwright herself, clearly has a more intimate relationship with, and comprehensive understanding of the former. She details the work of Pam Gems (Piaf) and Caryl Churchill (Cloud Nine), and analyzes perceptively the paucity of women playwrights. Wandor devotes a chapter to each of the three chronological phases she has observed in the development of British sexual/political theatre from 1969 to the present, situating the work in the larger political and social context . In "Men Writers in the 70's" Wandor points out the well-intentioned but nevertheless deficient portrayals of women by such playwrights as John McGrath and David Hare. She says that our "gendered perspective" inhibits even our imaginations, and suggests that to more accurately re-represent women, the male writer first re-examine and re-represent the complexities of being male. Perhaps due to the limitations of Wandor's...