George Bernard Shaw and Christopher Newton: Explorations of Shavian Theatre by Keith Garebian (review)

HUMANITIES 165 patriarchal authority, for the circumscription of women is presented as a kindness, a means of helping them to help themselves.' The following assertion about the way in which Portrait supposedly pushes its readers to accept certain conclusions might also be attacked for analogous reasons: 'Isabel's autonomy should be apparent in her "free" choice to return to Rome, the readers' in their acceptance of the inevitability and "rightness" of this decision.' Despite limitations such as these, however, most of Walton's insights are worth considering. Her remarks are revealing, for example, about the implicit sexism of stories such as 'The Author of Beltraffio' and 'The Lesson of the Master,' which she discusses in an interesting chapter focusing on certain stories appearing between 1881 and 1902 that 'evolve from efforts to denigrate and control Feminine "presence" into endeavours that grant priority to Felninine unknowability.' In addition, much of her commentary on the three major-phase novels is insightful, particularly her conclusions about their female characters. About The Ambassadors , for example, she suggests that 'each major female character embodies a particular mode of reading'; about The WblgS of the Dove she argues, convincingly, that the 'absences' not only are suggestive, but 'assume more importance than what is "present'" within the novel. Finally, in her discussion of The Golde'1 Bowl she makes admirable use of Luce Irigaray's perception of the feminine as being 'plural and nonrestrictive ' to celebrate Maggie Verver's actions in saving her marriage, and to contrast her strategy with the more restrictive, masculine behaviour of Charlotte Stant. In sum, Priscilla Walton's The Disruption of tile Feminine in Henry James is a useful, at times provocative book, which joins the growing number of recent studies that employ poststructuralist critical approaches to illuminate James's work. (WILLIAM R. MACNAUGHTON) Keith Garebian. George Bernard Slmw and Christopher Newton: Explorations of SIzavian Thealre Mosaic Press 1993. 164. $15.95 paper When Christopher Newton was appointed artistic director of the Shaw Festival in 1980, he faced a deficit of $600,000; within four years Newton eliminated the debt and showed a profit. This miracle was accomplished by two strategies: supplementing Shavian offerings with musicals and popular British plays, chiefly from the turn of the century through the 19308; and enlivening Shaw via bold visual design and sometimes controversial textual cuts. In effect, Newton defined a theatrical 'age of Shaw' that had the cultured yet commercial attractions of television's 'Masterpiece Theatre'; and, as Garebian points out (quoting Ronald Bryden), he took 'the same kind of liberties with Shaw's plays that directors had long 166 LETIERS IN CANADA 1992 taken with Shakespeare's,' thus implicitly claiming for Shaw the status of cultural icon. Despite the fact that Shaw presented himself as Shakespeare 's rival, it has been rather surprising to observe the success with which the Shavian theatrical theme park has elTIulated its model at Stratford . Some of the most exciting recent discussions of Shakespeare have considered The Bard as a cultural artifact, and a comparable study of the mechanisms of cultural renown at work on Shaw could tell us much. Keith Garebian presents, instead, data from which such a cultural study might be developed. Ignoring the variety of Festival fare, and acknowledging Newton's administrative skills in passing, he devotes the majority of this book to eight major productions: Misalliance (1980), Saint Joan (1981), Caesar and Cleopatra (1983), Heartbreak House (1985), Major Barbara (1987), You Never Can Tell (1988), Man and Superman (1989), and Misalliance (1990). His approach is 'exploratory, descriptive, and impressionistic' rather than analytical. While Garebian proposes that 'Newton stakes Inuch of his Shavian revisionism on an idea of Shaw's surrealism,' this term of Newton's is treated with tactful freedom - 'Shaw is certainly not a surrealist in the accepted sense of a Breton, Jarry, Dalt Rimbaud, et cetera' - and in the end serves as a means of indicating the director's attraction to those aspects of Shaw's plays that have always escaped the confines of realist drama, in particular their alogical, passional undercurrents . The core of the book consists of extended descriptions of productions accompanied by commentaries sympathetically elucidating the director's intentions. In...