Retreats From Realism in Recent English Drama by Ruby Cohn (review)

Book Reviews 277 multiple, tableaux-like, call-for-applause, moralizing, and didactic. His theoretical framework concerning the need for endings and the difficulties playwrights often encounter when creating them is written in a lucid and engaging style and it should appeal to a general audience. Schmidt defines the task of the drama critic as sustaining "an ending's multitude of significations, unmasking its power to legitimate dominant interests while delineating its utopian potential to anticipate a resolution of conflict unrealizable under present circumstances" (32). In order to set this principle into practice in his individual studies. he poses the question of why the pLays end when they do and in many cases provides one or more alternative endings. Each play is introduced and set in its historical context for the non~GellTIanist reader, and the discussion is framed in such a way as to be of general interest. The individual pLays treated are relatively unknown 1 0 an English~speaking audience, even if the author may be familiar: Gerstenberg's Ugolillo (1768), Goethe's Stella (1776), H.L. Wagner's The Child-Murderess (1776), J.M.R. Lenz's works, BUchner's Danton's Death (1835), Hauptmann's The Weavers, and Fleisser's Soldiers ;nlngols/adt (1926-28/1968-70). Owing to the untimely death of the author, the first three chapters (Introduction, Sturm 11l1d Drang, Lenz) are fuller and more nuanced in their discussion of closure than the later ones, but this is more a question of tone than of substance. ] am not sure how much knowing Henry Schmidt personally and respecting his many talents and varied contributions 10 German theater has colored my review of his book How Dramas End, but 1 am grieved at the untimeliness of his death. One small consolation thus far has been that this book exists and that through it, as through his translations of BUchner and F1eisser, he may continue to introduce an English~speaking audience to the intricacies of the works he loved. SUSAN L. COCALlS, UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS/AMHERST RUBY COHN. Retreats From Realism in Recent English Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991. Pp. 21}, illustrated. $54.95. The retreats from realism that Ruby Cohn explores in her study of some 100 English plays produced between 1956 and 1990 remain part of the broader tradition of English theatre. As the playwrights with whom she deals retreated from realism (which Cohn defines in tenns of the imitation of the surface of middle~class reality through linear cause~and-effect plot, psychologically coherent character, and discursive dialogue [3]), they were calling upon "older English dramatic traditions" (I). The devices from this tradition that the playwrights employed in this retreat, Cohn asserts, are the use of England as a dramatic metaphor, modem adaptations of Shakespeare, the use of verse, the use of metatheatrics. explorations of madness, dreams and ghosts, and the use of history. Cohn devotes a chapter to each of these devices, discussing some of the same plays and playwrights in different chapters because of the obvious overlap that occurs. Book Reviews Although the discussions are based on printed texts, Cohn's analysis of selected plays by John Arden, Edward Bond, Howard Brenton, Caryl Churchill, David Edgar, Pam Gems, Christopher Hampton, David Hare, Peter Nichols, Tom Stoppard, David Storey, Heathcote Williams, and Charles Wood are informed with insights garnered from her attendance at their productions and their reception by reviewers. Indeed, one of the values that the book offers is the sense of joining Cohn in her fascination with and enjoyment of these performances. Somewhat critical, for example, of Peter Shaffer's Royal Hum ofthe SUII for its lack of true Brechtian epic qualities, depending more on "the visual accoutrements of costume drama" (185), Cohn nevertheless comments on how "the passionate acting by Colin Blakely and Robert Stephens bolstered the impression of continuous confrontation and spiritual brotherhood" (185) that the play also presents. Perhaps the book's greatest weakness is its reliance on plot summary. When analysis is there it is cogent and convincing, but one tends to accept Cohn's judge· ments ("Carol Churchill is the most profound and theatrical writer of her generation" or "Laced with nostalgic melodies, the text...