Two Plays, ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’ and ‘Comedy: A Tragedy in One Act’ by Nikos Kazantzakis (review)

Reviews 387 director was doing at the same time. This problem of chronology some­ times defeats even Styan, who at times plays fast and loose with the dates of his supporting documents, especially regarding the productions revamped over a period of years. Readers should therefore exercise cau­ tion when sorting through Styan’s supporting quotations. For example, Granville Barker visited Germany in 1910; his views, published that year, are cited to describe the 1933 version of Faust and the 1912 British version of Oedipus. There are other occasional slips: Reinhardt’s produc­ tion of The Taming of the Shrew which, Styan alleges on p. 54, Martin Harvey brought to the Prince of Wales’ Theatre in 1909, did not exist. (Harvey produced his own Reinhardt-inspired version of the play in 1913, assisted by William Poel, which Huntly Carter describes in The Theatre of Max Reinhardt, evidently Styan’s source). Surely Styan need hardly repeat Gottfried Reinhardt’s rather inane observation that his father reached working class audiences as Piscator and Brecht never did. And while Reinhardt’s use of the repertory system clearly impressed Edwardian Englishmen, it can hardly be said to be a contribution to Continental theatre practice. The book is good for what it is, but it is important to identify what it is not, namely, a truly comprehensive study of Reinhardt’s aesthetics and working methods. Only in the last chapter does Styan begin to de­ scribe not only Reinhardt’s effects but also his method of preparing them, of selecting and analyzing his texts, and of managing the vast mechanical and human resources assembled for each production; this chapter could be a book in itself. Edward Gordon Craig used to complain that Rein­ hardt was a manager and not an artist (see The Mask, 4, No. 3 (1912], 5, No. 4 [1913], and Fourteen Notes on Eight Pages from The Story of the Theatre by Glenn Hughes [Seattle, 1931], pp. 7, 19); but it was precisely Reinhardt’s ability to harness his own eclectic tendencies and the varied talents of his collaborators that made him a great practitioner if not a great theorist, and this surely needs more extensive treatment. Styan repeatedly reminds us of Reinhardt’s belief in the centrality of the actor’s performance, but he only spends four pages in the final chapter in discussing how the director selected his casts and worked with the actors in rehearsal. One wonders who imposed the space limitations that Styan mentions (on p. 108), for surely a longer and more comprehen­ sive study is needed, a massive analysis of Reinhardt’s multiform aesthetic as it emerged over time, on the scale of Edward Braun’s studies of Meyerhold. In the meantime, we must be grateful for this short study in the Cambridge series, which serves to convince us of the importance of the artist and the range, vitality, and sheer volume of his work. CARY M. MAZER University of Pennsylvania Nikos Kazantzakis. Two Plays, ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’ and 'Comedy: A Tragedy in One Act.’ Translated from the Greek by Kimon Friar. Minneapolis: North Central Publishing Company, 1982. Pp. 124. The eighth volume in the Nostos Books series on modem Greek 388 Comparative Drama writers and thinkers, edited by historian Theofanis Stavrou, appeared one year before the celebration of the centenary of Nikos Kazantzakis’s birth (1883-1957). Kazantzakis is, of course, the famous Cretan writer and thinker who composed at least eighteen dramas in metrical or free verse, and in prose, while he was writing several major novels and his colossal epic of modem man, The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (1938; English translation by Kimon Friar, 1958). Sodom and Gomorrah and Comedy: A Tragedy in One Act were expertly translated by Kimon Friar who also wrote the scholarly intro­ duction to the first play. Professor Kark Kerenyi did the introduction to the one-act play, and Professor Peter Bien turned it into eloquent English. All translations were first published in 1975 and 1976 issues of The Literary Review, and the longer play, under the title Burn Me to Ashes, had its world première some twenty years ago in the Jan Hus Playhouse in New York...