Richard Foreman and the Ontological-Hysteric Theatre by Kate Davy (review)

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 own "gendered perspective," or simply priority of personal interest, she progressively writes less and less about gay male theatre until, by the last chapter, "The Future," she deals almost exclusively with feminist theatre. Catherine Bergart Richard Foreman and the Ontological-HystericTheatre. Kate Davy. UMI Research Press (Ann Arbor, Mi.), 253 pp., $29.95 (cloth). This volume, the first extensive study to appear on the theatre of Richard Foreman, is as ambitious as it is welcome. Davy analyzes and documents in considerable detail the visual and aural components that constitute Ontological-Hysteric Theatre productions, attempting to demonstrate to us "how" Foreman's unusual productions work. Because, as Davy states at the outset, so few people have seen Foreman's theatre, the reader has to rely on some 78 illustrations (many badly reproduced) that are keyed to Davy's various topics. The chapters on Foreman as playwright and as spectator of his own work seem to get close to the heart of his theatrical method. Other 142 chapters on Foreman as 'roducer, scenographer, inventor, and director are full of the kind of descriptive and documentary detail that may just confuse and even bore the uninitiated who have never experienced a Foreman production . Davy has wisely chosen to concentrate mainly on only the eight Ontologic-Hysteric Theatre productions she herself has seen, showing us in passing the "effort" it takes to enter Foreman's world. We should all be glad to have this book and glad, too, that UMI Press's "Theater and Dramatic Studies," under the general editorship of Bernard Becherman, are making scholarly dissertations rf this type available. ME Walter Felsenstein inszeniert Mozart/Die Hochzeit des Figaro. Edited by Ilse Koban. Verband de Theaterschaffenden der DDR, 163pp., unpriced (paper). Opera on Operas: Opera in Perspective. John D. Drummond. University of Minnesota Press, 383 pp., $25.00 (cloth). English National Opera Guides, Nos. 1-8. Edited by Nicholas John. Riverrun Press, 80 -130 pp., $4.95 (paper). There are so many books about opera already, new publications get lost in the flood. For theatre people, often intimidated by the notion of stage plays being sung-not to mention the baffling codes of musical notation-the world of opera, on or off stage, tends to be a preserve best left to those with an education and an appetite for music. This can be a great loss, considering the powerful emotional and dramatic enhancement magnificent music gives to already potent theatre-pieces. In some cases, such as hectic nineteenth-century melodramas like La Tosca, without a score by Verdi, these theatre-fables would long since have vanished from the stage. Even twentieth-century hokum like the dramatic version of Madame Butterfly or The Girl of the Golden West, without the music of Puccini, is either high camp or horrendous when acted as legitimate drama. It's often said, in answer to partisans of dramatic realism and naturalism-who love to...