Directions in Modern Theatre and Drama by John Gassner (review)

230 MODERN DRAMA September DIRECTIONS IN MODERN THEATRE AND DRAMA, by John Gassner, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., New York, 1965, 457 pp. Price $6.75. During the calendar year, 1964, more than 650 books dealing primarily with theater and drama were published in this country. Of these John Gassner was author or editor of four. His Directions in Modern Theatre and Drama has just been published. Considering the number of books printed yearly and Gass· ner's own output, our supposition may be that his new book contains nothing very fresh or different. Our supposition would be in error. Gassner has produced a clear, helpful, readable story of drama and its production from the vogue of realism in the 19th century to the drama of the absurd in the present sixties. In brief synopsis, the author explains realism and why it came to be; follows with several forms and experiments in anti-realism (impressionism, symbolism, constructivism); divides drama and production into two categories: realism and theatricalism; and makes a case for the blending or synthesis of the realistic and the theatrical, with sensible warnings against over-theatricality. This exposition occupies 230 pages of the book. Along the way the writer makes several sharp analyses (illusionism and realism) and sets down convincing explanations: "The progress of modern theatre has been from 19th century efforts to bind ourselves to environment for the sake of external and literal truth to 20th century efforts to liberate ourselves from the environment for the sake of internal or imaginative truth." He startles or challenges the reader: "With the dissolution of character [in modem plays] we come to the true age of decadence. It is not obscenity, morbidity or undue fascination with death and decay that undermines the drama ... but the disappearance of man; this alone constitutes decadence in the theatre." These first 230 pages comprise his thesis. There follow 130 pages of essays, critiques, analyses on various subjects by various writers, some of which are pertinent to the thesis, some of which are distracting. The book becomes over-complex . The question comes: Wouldn't the book have profited from the omission of, or a greater selectivity in this material? Not that some of it is not stimulating. For example, Marvin Rosenberg's "A Metaphor for Dramatic Form" is a clear, illuminating discussion of the non-sequential, contextual form in modern drama. Gassner concludes with a chapter on the contemporary situation which provides a helpful and needed summary. He appends a chronology on modern theater, listing significant theatrical events from Hugo's Hernan; to 1964. This again is helpful. The book is recommended to the student who is beginning his study of modern drama, to the theater goer who is curious about why present day plays are what they are, and to the expert who will be roused to take issue with some of the perceptive author's contentions. ALLEN CRAFTON University of Kansas GEORG BOCHNER, by Herbert Lindenberger, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, 1964, 162 pp. Price $4.50' Although Buchner was scarcely known in Germany until the end of his own century, his international fame has gradually spread via France and England during the last two decades and, finally, even reached the stages of New York's Lincoln Center in 1965. Contemporary playwrights such as Brecht and Ionesco ...