Howard Barker's Theatre of Seduction by Charles Lamb (review)

172 Book Reviews palette of metadramatic hues, but he himself always enfolded it into a total experience" (p. 104). Indeed. By contrast, John Elsom's short piece on the incestuous delights of the Anglo-American musical is witty, well written and thought provoking. Although the genre of the musical may appear to be too tangential to the main concerns of a volume dealing with "drama on drama," Elsom swiftly dismisses that error. He begins with a reminder of the extent to which the genre is rooted, historically, in a web of intertextuality. Elsom's discussion moves easily between The Beggar's Opera and City of Angels, displaying an enviably detailed grasp of the genre's workings at many different levels. Gay's low-life parody of Italian opera proves to be an excellent generic point of reference for an appreciation of Gelbart, Coleman and Zippel's parody of Hollywood film ncir. Elsom is not afraid to poke fun at received theoretical wisdom on "intertextuality " and "originality" which is refreshing after the turgid labours of critics obsessed by their efforts to uncover kinship with all that they regard as subversive, progressive and interrogative. You can't imagine Elsom giving a tinker person 's curse about whether Keefe's A Mad World, My Masters is a work which "does not foreground subversive activities," where in spite of all his "playfulness in the use of cultural signifiers," one has to conclude, like Clouseau and Klaus Peter Milller, that "it is difficult to detect a subversive quality in this play" (p. 44). But the same critic raises no difficult questions about Barker's "radical elitism" nor his blithely patronising gift of "rights of interpretation" to those poor dumb clucks, the audience. Reflexivity has got to begin at home. J.M. REID , UNIVERSITY OF WEST OF ENGLAND, BRISTOL CHARLES LAMB. Howard Barker's Theatre of Seduction. Contemporary Theatre Studies no.[9, Harwood Academic Publishers: Amsterdam [997· Pp. 154, illustra[ed. $90, hard cover; $30, paperback. This is a brave book, for no other reason than the author's willingness to tackle that idiosyncratic writer Howard Barker. But it is also a slight book, which takes only a glancing look at a substantial, though puzzling writer. Barker lies on the fringe of modem British theatre, not well known, yet constantly calling for attention through the steady flow of plays he creates which fascinate and, it must be said, also repel. Yet he survives. Support from elements of the Royal Shakespeare Company, from 1978 to 1988, gave him a presence in London; more recently the performance of his plays has depended largely on The Wrestling School, a unique assemblage of actors dedicated to Barker, and on theatres and festivals willing to accommodate non-commercial plays (as for instance did the Edinburgh Festival last year with Barker's Book Reviews 173 Wounds to the Face). European stages have also been friendly to Barker as an avant-gardiste, and The Wrestling School has toured more than once in France and Germany. But Anglo-American critical discussion has been limited, and British reviewers have seldom enthused at openings, though every year brings a new play or two. Barker has been remarkably prolific and in the last twenty years has written at least thirty plays - many of them very substantial - and all, incidentally, published by John Calder, the publisher of Beckett. In his approach to Barker, Lamb has been selective. He discusses extensively two works: Judith: A Seduction (t990), a short three-hander, and the very dense and lengthy The Castle (1985). This play, first staged by the RSC, and revived in 1995 by The WresLiing School, enjoys the status of a Barker classic, inevitably a controversial classic. Lamb points out the general truth that Barker has been a difficult figure to classify. In the seventies he was easily gathered in with the raft of leftist playwrights of the period - Bond, BrenIOn , Edgar and so on - but from the early eighties onward he has turned from the political 10 the personal. Lamb's introduction focuses on this departure, and he uses his first chapter 10 establish, mainly with reference to Edward Bond's drama, what Barker's theatre is not. Barker...