Theater and Revolution in France Since 1968 by Judith Graves Miller (review)

94 BOOK REVIEWS This is a case of defense by restructuring the world. or autism (the tendency to see things as we want to see them). the type of activity commonly engaged in by Davies." Of Lenny it is said: "Lenny's attitude to women was distorted by his mother to such an extent that he cannot relate to women in a normal manner," Perhaps, but the play does not say so; and the critic seems to be conscientiously packing into The Homecoming everything that the playwright deliberately left out. Teddy the enigmatic is theatrically much more challenging and exciting than Teddy explained as autistic, unable to relate or excite reciprocal feeling. It is at least possible that he might relate very well to the other members of his department, back home in America with the lovely house and the stimulating environment! The title of the book is taken from an exchange in The Dwarfs. MARK. I see that butter's going up. LEN. I'm prepared to believe it, but it doesn't answer my question. The effect of bUller's going up is not so much to answer the Pinter questions as simply to remove them, and in the process, unwittingly to diminish Pinter's stature. A last regret. The words· "humour," «farce" and "comedy" occur quite frequently in the book, and there is a section on "Humour" in the chapter on Pinter's technique; but like most Pinter criticism, bUller's going up fails to conjure up any feeling of the nature of Pinter's comedy, and just how funny most of his plays are in performance. Perhaps it is indeed a humour that defies clear-cut analysis. ALRENE SYKES University of Queensland THEATER AND REVOLUTION IN FRANCE SINCE 1968, by Judith Graves Miller. Lexington, Ky.: French Forum, Publishers, 1977. 169 pp. $7.95. J. G. Miller takes "May 1968'- (still a milestone of mythic proportions among French intellectuals) as a dividing point between the old and the new attitudes of "popular" theaters towards their public, in an attempt to identify a few major trends in a specific genre- the theater of social commentary with a revolutionary intent. The title seems at first to promise more than the book delivers, because the reader might expect theories and interpretations where he will find only a clearheaded expose of the facts surrounding the activities of four independent theater companies in Paris, Avignon and Metz. Underlining the continuing influence of Brecht and Artaud, the authof begins a study of the background of "post-May revolutionary theater" with regard to the failure of government subsidized troupes to achieve "cultural democratization." After describing how the events of May 1968 affected the theater, Judith Miller provides a careful analysis of four theater companies who have kept trying- and, in some cases, successfully - to make meaningful contact with what used to be called the U non_ public," the French working classes. The survey of Ariane Mnouchkine's Theatre du Soleil. a troupe based in Paris, founded in 1964, centers on a comparison between two of their most BOOK REVIEWS successful productions, 1789 and 1793, both dealing directly with the theme of the French Revolution, involving a collective creation based on historical documentation. Andre Benedetto's Nouvelle Compagnied'Avignon,crealed in 1966 to counterbalance the official Festival d'Avignon, and to resist the concept of an "official culture," relies more on its director's ingenuity. His free-verse ritual and allegorical satires aim at subjects from American policies in Vietnam (Napalm, 1967) to the control of French railway networks (Le petit train de M. Kamode, 1969); however, he devotes most of his energy to rally the people of Southern France for the liberation of Oecitania (La Madone des ordures, 1973). Another independent troupe devoted to regional concerns, but with a stronger Marxist bent, is Jacques Kraemer 's Theatre Populaire de Lorraine: its collective creations, including parades, seminars. sit-ins, agit-prop techniques and extended parables, all deal with the relationships between the mining industry bosses and the underprivileged classes of the "people of the valley." Its public, factory workers and immigres, is sought after and catered to as the real "hero" of such plays as...