In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Briefly Noted

Under its Methuen Drama and Arden imprints, Bloomsbury Publishing maintains an ambitious programme of contributions in performance studies that are well worth the attention of our readers. The Critical Companions series covers many British, American, and Irish dramatists, with each volume containing original critical contributions by several writers. Although most of the volumes are about individual dramatists, there are also studies of, for example, Verse Drama in England, 1900-2010 (Morra; bibliographical details are given below for all titles mentioned here), The Irish Dramatic Revival (Roche), and Disability Theatre and Modern Drama (Johnston). Although there is inevitably some variation between volumes, the series represents a very useful critical and contextual set of guides. There are significant essays on aspects of music hall and pantomime in Popular Performance (Ainsworth) and on aspects of reviewing in Theatre Criticism (Radosavlljevic). Catherine Cockin's Edith Craig and the Theatres of Art continues the important reassessment of Craig's work in the theatre. The Engage series, which concentrates on contemporary practice, includes, for example, a volume on Authenticity in Contemporary Theatre and Performance (Schultze) that deals, amongst others, with Punchdrunk and Forced Entertainment. Of great importance to anyone grappling with problems of recording performance in a digital age is Documenting Performance: the Context and Processes of Digital Curation and Archiving (Sant). The Arden list has diversified away from the familiar scholarly texts of plays into an engagement with material facets of performance that has produced [End Page 64] insightful accounts of, for example, Performing King Lear (Croall), The Hand on the Shakespearean Stage (Karim-Cooper), Shakespeare and Costume (Lennox) and Shakespeare in the Theatre: Nicholas Hytner (Rokison-Woodall).

Other relevant contributions to our knowledge of medieval and early modern theatre come in Plen an Gwari: The Playing Places of Cornwall, a beautifully presented exploration of its topic (Coleman), the magisterial Staging Conventions in Medieval English Theatre (Butterworth), a study of Playwriting Playgoers in Shakespeare's Theater (Pangallo) and William Prynne and Jeremy Collier feature in a reassessment of Antitheatricality and the Body Public (Freeman). Concentrating on more recent times, theatre architecture is scrutinised in Setting the Scene: Perspectives on Twentieth-Century Theatre Architecture and Modern Playhouses (both Fair). Bringing the story even more up to date is Forms of Conflict: Contemporary Wars on The English Stage (Soncini), which covers plays from the 1990s to 2011.

We do not normally review anthologies of plays but there are occasional volumes that are unusual enough to cause us to bend our rules. The two fine volumes of Dickensian Dramas edited by J. S. Bratton and Jim Davis, are exemplary in every way, with important critical and editorial material permeating the whole enterprise. Rather different is Workers' Play Time: Seven Scripts from Seven Struggles (Nicholls), which prints a selection of plays from the 1970s to 2016 that were created within the context of workers' theatre. As the blurb states "Often such plays are staged in alternative venues and too often their scripts are not gathered in any archive so that they are in danger of being lost". This volume goes some way to redress that balance, including the 1977 Women's Theatre Group's Out! On the Costa del Trico and Kathleen McCreery's 1987 The Chambermaids, as well as more recent work. Our final exception is The Plays of Margaret Drabble (Fernandez) a quirky volume that prints Drabble's two almost forgotten plays together with essays on her writing and its cultural and social contexts. [End Page 65]

...

pdf

Share