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Book Reviews 447 Bathhouse), Tairov (Salome, Princess Brambilla, Girojle-Girojla, Phedre), Vakhtangov (Hadibuk and Princess Turandot), and, in especially uncharacteristic productions , Stanislavsky (Cain , Le Mariage de Figaro, Othello, Dead Souls); plays by Mayakovsky, Evreinov. and Erdman; actors Alisa Koonen , Olga Knipper. and Mikhail Chekhov; and, designers Exter, Vladimir and Georgy Stenberg, and Marc ChagalJ, among many others, There is virtually nothing to fault in this extraordinarily lavish and thorough volume. Russell and Rudnitsky have contributed complementary works on the Russian stage that offer a fascinating, often moving, and always inspiring examination ofa remarkable era in modem theatrical art. JAMES FlSHER, WABASH COLLEGE RONALD H. WAINSCOTI. Staging O'Neill: The Experimental Years. 1920-1934. New Haven: Yale University Press 1988. Pp. xviii, 337, illustrated. $40.00. Ronald Wainscott's Staging O'Neill: The Experimental Years, 1920- 1934 is theater history at its most informative. Drawing on a wide array of archiva1 material, including prompt books, ground plans, set drawings, letters, phot05raphs, and early reviews, Wain;cott vividly reconstructs the look and sound of twenty-two of O'Neill's plays as they origina1ly were produced, beginning with Beyond the Horizon in 1920 and ending with Days Without End in 1934. The playwright participated in most of these productions , and the glimpses afforded of O'Neill interacting with his colleagues will interest those who follow his career; but the chief focus of this study is on the scenic designers and directors who revolutionized American theater in the 1920Sand for whom O'Neill's ambitious scripts were the occasions for testing a "New Stagecraft" inspired by European symbolism and expressionism. The author demonstrates the extent to which O'Neill's exciting use of masks, music, split characters, interior monologues, crowd scenes, and lavish spectacle depended on the pragmatic talents of such designers as Robert Edmond Jones, Lee Simonson, Clean Throckmorton, and Jo Mielziner. O'Neill was uncommonly fortunate , too, in his directors, notably George Cram Cook, Arthur Hopkins, James Light, Rouben Mamoulian , and Philip Moeller (who directed fi ve of O'Neill's most imaginative plays for the Theater Guild). It was Moeller, for example, who suggested the device of freezing the action in Strange Interlude to accompany the actors' thought-asides. The ;dea occurred to him, we are told, when a train in which he was riding suddenly made an emergency stop, freezing the passengers in mid-motion. Wainscott suggests that on more than one occasion O'Neill's experimental plays may have received better productions than they deserved, thanks to these visionary directors. He convinces us that The Fountaifl, Marco Millions, Dynamo, and Days Without End were pictoria1ly stunning on the stage, although as texts these plays today seem barely readable. He even rescues from oblivion O'Neill's adaptation of The Ancient Mariner, 448 Book Reviews which opened in 1924 at the Provincetown Playhouse but ran for only thirty-three performances. Apparently this production was an important experiment for O'Neill, Jones, and Light in the use of masks, music, a chorus, and other scenic effects. Similarly, Wainscott reconstructs the legendary production of Lazarus Laughed mounted by the Pasadena Playhouse in 1928 under the direction of Gilmore Brown. Brown's production was indeed heroic, employing [74 performers. 300 masks , and a score [or 22 musicians. We learn that during each performance music was blended with Lazarus's Nietzschean laughter so as to highlight the sound: This method, we are told, "was reasonably successful." Wainscott can be biting in his assessment of O'Neill; his sympathy clearly lies with the production teams who sought to respond creatively to the challenges posed by the playwright's conceptions. Yet he conveys the excitement of O'Neill's opening night triumphs, too. There are fine descriptions ofthe expressive lighting made possible by the innovative "sky dome" that Cook constructed for The Emperor Jones, the brilliant unit set designed by Robert Jones for Desire Under lhe Elms, and the masks used in The Great God Brown (they were not over-the-head pieces but flexible facial coverings). T~e study throughout is remarkable for its well-researched detail. For instance, the author speculates that the creaky old floor boards of the Provincetown stage might have...

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