José López Rubio by Marion Peter Holt (review)

Book Reviews presented to us through an image, "3 trifle unreal, abstracted from time and space, providing at the outset the essential stage structure of the play where everything is eoacted within this relationship. this alternation between a voice, unearthed from the past ... and a character whom this distant voice strikes with great force." Chabert has a real understanding of what is new about Krapp's Last Tape and how it relates to the whole question of Beckett's late style in the theater. As such, his commentary is the centerpiece of Knowlson's edition, for it strikes at the basic problem of both production and acting in a play whose real essence is the drama of words themselves:"how can a play which is based on the act oflistening be made to work in the theatre'! How can the act of listening be dramatized?" Knowlson'5 edition goes a long way in providing some key answers to these questions. For in addition to Chabert, Jean Martin, Max Wall, Martin Held, Donald Davis. Rick Cluchey. Alan Schneider, Patrick Magee, and Donald McWhinnie speak with admirable clarity, force, and feeling of their problems and triumphs in bringing Krapp's Lasl Tape to life on stage. The edition includes as well a revised version ofStan Gontarski's manuscript study of the play (which first appeared in [977 in the special number edited by Enoch Brater for the Journal of Modern Literature), and a small sample lifted from one of the best books on Beckett currently in print: Clas Zilliacus's Beckett and Broadcasting: A Study ofthe Works ofSamuel Beckettfor and in Radio and Television (Abo: Abo Akademi [976). The handbook concludes with three critical interpretations (two on Krapp's relation to Proust), and though these are generally well-formulated arguments, as they sit here they do not seem well integrated into the general tone of the edition, whose real focus has been heavily weighed toward production. But perhaps that slight imbalance is a liability of any casebook which sets out to cover so much ground in so short a space. Nevertheless, Knowlson has provided us with a compact collection of some useful material on Krapp's Lasl Tape. This new series of theater workbooks has successfulJy been launched in a neat volume which selVes Beckett well. Knowlson's project is off to a fine start. ENOCH SRATER, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN MARION PETER HOLT. Jos~ L6pez Rubio. Boston: Twayne Publishers 1980. pp. 155. A book on the modem Spanish dramatist Jose L6pez Rubio was long overdue. He is known to students of Spanish in North America through his plays for classroom use introduced and edited by North American critics (La otra orilla. De la noche a la mariana, Un trono para Cristy, Una madeja de lana azul celesle, La venda en los ojos), as well as through plays included in some anthologies of Spanish drama. Yet his many works have received only limited critical attention outside of Europe. Marion Peter Holt's book is therefore a welcome contribution. ]t synthesizes life, works (both narrative and theatrical). and critical opinions. The author considers L6pez Rubio a "man of the theab'e," and rightly so. He has been involved in all aspects of theatre - writing, adapting, translating and producing. He is also a man of many talents - film scenarist, film director. writer of serious television dramas. His major contribution to the Spanish artistic life, however, remains in the 186 Book Reviews theatre. He has written more than twenty plays, some of them (Alberto. eetos del aire. La ofra orilla. La venda en los ojos) among the best in the modem Spanish theatre. Holt debuoks the notion th.t L6pez Rubio is only a writer of "te.tro de evasi6n." In fact,moral and social preoccupations appear in Las manos son inocenles. El corazan en la mano, La ofra orilla, as well as in some teleplays. L6pez Rubio's concern with illusion, multiple personalities, role-playing and the technique of theatre-within-theatre shows the marked influence of Piranddlo particularly in such plays as Alberto, De la noche a la manana, eelos del aire and La venda en los ajas. In fact, an exhaustive study ofPirandello...