A Queer Sort of Materialism: Recontextualizing American Theater by David Savran (review)

Reviews DAVID SAVRAN. A Queer Sort of Materialism: Recontextualizing American Theater. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003· Pp. xii + 234. US$49.50 (Hb); US$22.95 (Pb). Reviewed by Alan Sin/ield. University o/Sussex David Savran's title marks a shift in emphasis in his work, he says. The context for which he is rcaching is now not so much one that might illuminate sexualities as a more materialist apparatus, deriving from Pierre Bourdieu and dwelling on cultural fields and hierarchies. Thus, for instance, he concludes that Angels in America is better explained by its location in the prevailing cultural hierarchy than by the playwright's individual predisposition. Savran calls his sort of materialism "queer" because he still has a good deal to say about sexualities and because his materialism is work in progress, not yet fully defined. A major essay on the whole nature of American theatre, "Middlebrow Anxiety ," recalls the disputes over highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow culture in the 1950S (involving such luminaries as Dwight Macdonald, Clement Greenberg , and Leslie Fiedler). Savran finds that theatre, from the Provincetown Players through the heyday of Broadway, was located, in his view reasonably, as a middlebrow cultural formation. He develops this analysis by demonstrating continuities between Sowh Pacific and Rent and by studying the principles and influence of New York Times reviewers. The argument is persuasive and is supported by wide and detailed knowledge. Lately, the situation has been changing, he finds; the middlebrow typification of Broadway is becoming inadequate. Now we have "Hipbrow," trading on radical chic and liberal pluralism . and even more compromised. Actually, this chapter could have been queerer. Savran observes that the Modern Drama, 46:4 (Winter 2003) 663 REVIEWS middlebrow was perceived as effeminate; this might have cued in a discussion of theatre as gay space and of the relations between gay subculture and the middlebrow. The ensuing chapter, "The Queerest Art," brings theatre and queerness together but is more concerned with a comparison with film. The second half of the book is titled "Closet Dramas." These chapters effect distinctive combinations of sexualities and historical contextualization. Sam Shepard's play Suicide in B-Flar shares an anxiety about masculinity with Robert Bly. In rhe Summer House, by Jane Bowles, despite the closeted circumstances in which it was written, allows an implicit lesbian potential to derive out of overheated mother-{\aughter relationships. Tennessee Williams' story The Black Masseur treats of masochism in conjunction with racial difference . All these essays are shrewd and extremely interesting. The theme that runs all through is the present state of New York theatre, in light of critical, popular, and financial successes such as Angels in America, by Tony Kushner, and Love' Valor! Compassion! by Terrence McNally. Savran is less interested in experimental productions by Split Britches, Holly Hughes, Porno Afro Homos, Lypsinka, and Paula Vogel. He appraises Hughes and gives sustained attention to Vogel, drawing upon a longstanding friendship and sympathy with her and her work. He mentions Split Britches and the WOW Cafe respectfully, but not as the achievements of the decade, which will surely annoy some readers. It is to AnRels in America and Love! Valor! Compassion! that Savran returns. Do they manifest assimilation or breakthrough ? On the one hand, Kushner and McNally establish a range of free-standing gay men, while deconstructing the binarisms that tend to constrain and limit them. This is a theatre of pluralism, undecidability, and anti-essentialism. On the other hand, they may be observed pushing the fashionable and comfortable buttons of liberal pluralism. This, in Savran's view, is what passes for radicalism in the United States. While gesturing toward tolerance and reform, liberal pluralism presents big business and oppression as the inevitable status quo. Nonetheless, Savran investigates seriously Kushner's uses of Walter Benjamin and Mormonism, allowing Angels to seem quite substantial in intellect and imagination. What Savran doesn't quite say is that the ultimate question in Angels whether America is going to renew itself, out of its frontier traditions and with the guidance of gay men - is troublingly compatible with the idea of a World Order newly dominated by U.S. imperialism. Non-Americans may well believe that...