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1.Michael McCaffery, David Mayer, Anthony Jackson,

General Editor Phaidon Theatre Manuals Directing a Play.
London: Phaidon, 1988. 136 p. £7.95. ISBN
0-7148-2513-1.2.Michael Holt, David Mayer, Anthony
Jackson, General Editor Phaidon Theatre Manuals Stage
Design and Properties. London: Phaidon, 1988. 136 p. £7.95.
ISBN 0-7148-2515-8.3.Michael Holt, David Mayer, Anthony
Jackson, General Editor Phaidon Theatre Manuals Costume
and Make Up. London: Phaidon, 1988. 136 p. £7.95. ISBN
0-7148-2512-3.4.Neil Fraser, David Mayer, Anthony Jackson,
General Editor Phaidon Theatre Manuals Lighting and
Sound. London: Phaidon, 1988. 136 p. £7.95. ISBN
0-7148-2514-X.5.David Mayer, General Editor Phaidon
Theatre Manuals Stage Management and Theatre
Administration, Anthony Jackson London: Phaidon, 1988.
136 p. £7.95. ISBN 0-7148-2516-6.

J. Michael Walton

New Theatre Quarterly / Volume 5 / Issue 19 / August 1989, pp 306 - 307

DOI: 10.1017/S0266464X00003547, Published online: 15 January 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0266464X00003547

How to cite this article:

J. Michael Walton (1989). New Theatre Quarterly, 5, pp 306-307 doi:10.1017/S0266464X00003547

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Dennis Carroll
David Mamet
London: Macmillan, 1987. 171 p.
£18.00 (hbk), £5.95 (pbk).
ISBN 0-333-41365-2 (hbk), 0-333-41366-0 (pbk).
Dennis Carroll begins his introduction to Mamet's work
by taking up Mel Gussow's characterization of his plays as
engendering 'a sense of moral dismay'. Stressing this
quality, Carroll focuses on Mamet's concerns for the
individual's sense of alienation, exploring the themes of
'business', 'sex', and 'learning', through which his
characters come to define themselves and their relation-
ships with others. In doing so, Carroll observes Mamet's
characters falling short of the promise they hold,
manipulating friends, entering into reductive relationships
or justifying morally culpable acts with the 'pious maxims
of American liberalism'. It is a pessimistic vision, qualified
by those plays such as The Verdict and Edmond in which
Carroll sees Mamet implying the possibility of a
transcendence of alienation and isolation through a
personal 'communion', as characters come to know
themselves and find the opportunity for a genuine contact
with others. Finally, this exploration of theme is
complemented with chapters offering comments on
significant productions and briefly setting Mamet's work
in context. This is a useful and straightforward introduction
to Mamet's work for the general and interested reader,
concentrating on an investigation of Mamet's central
themes and use of language while offering comments on
his theatrical style and the plays in production.
NICK KAYE
Stefan Brecht
The Bread and Puppet Theatre
London: Methuen, two volumes, 1988. 783, 813 p.
£12.99 each.
ISBN 0-413-59890-X, 0-413-60510-8.
In these two volumes, Stefan Brecht provides an important
and exhaustive account of the development and work of
the Bread and Puppet Theatre. Volume One offers a
lengthy outline of the germination of Schumann's work
and a history of the company, with detailed commentaries
on the development of performance and presentational
styles during the 1960s, while Volume Two concentrates
on the changing nature of the theatre's values and
practices from 1970. In both volumes, Brecht draws
extensively on his own contemporary accounts of
performances, interviews with Schumann, and other
published and unpublished sources to provide as full as
possible written documentation of each performance.
Like Brecht's two previous books in this series, his own
commentary can be uncomfortable to follow, especially at
length. Brecht's chosen style reads as if he were offering a
full account of his own thoughts at the moment of writing
and consequently may, on occasion, seem pedantic or
unstructured. Nevertheless, his documentation and com-
mentary, complemented with copious footnoting, a
collection of black and white photographs, bibliography,
and appendices of Schumann's own programme notes as
306
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well as selected articles, provide an excellent and perhaps
definitive source book for the company's work.
NICK KAYE
Performance, Theory, General Studies
H. Philip Bolton
Dickens Dramatized
Boston, Mass.: G. K. Hall, 1987. xviii, 501 p. £60.
ISBN 0-8161-8924-2.
This remarkable compilation of information about drama-
tizations of Dickens is the work of one man and his
computer. The bulk of the book consists of a series of
chronologically ordered hand-lists, recording, novel by
novel and story by story, Dickens in performance on both
sides of the Atlantic from the first appearance of Sketches
by Boz in 1834 until 1985. As Bolton indicates in his
introductory material, the emergence of Dickens's early
novels, with their emphasis on comedy of character and
melodrama of situation, came at a moment in theatrical
history when the need for new plays exceeded the
capacity of dramatists to produce them. His records reveal
just how rapidly adaptations of Dickens proliferated at the
outset of his career, a process repeated when the new
medium of film became available in the early years of this
century, and yet again with the advent of first radio drama
and then television.
Bolton devotes a series of introductory essays to
matters of Dickensian and theatrical context - sometimes
idiosyncratic, but never less than informative. In his
account of his methods he gives credit to his predecessors
in the field, while at the same time disowning any claims
to comprehensive coverage. He has, nevertheless, as-
sembled an astonishing body of material. This is one of
those instances where what has clearly been a labour of
love has resulted in an end product of infinite usefulness.
ALAN SHELSTON
David Mayer, General Editor
Phaidon Theatre Manuals
London: Phaidon, 1988.
1. Michael McCaffery, Directing a Play. 136 p. £7.95.
ISBN 0-7148-2513-1.
2. Michael Holt, Stage Design and Properties. 136 p.
£7.95. ISBN 0-7148-2515-8.
3. Michael Holt, Costume and Make Up. 136 p. £7.95.
ISBN 0-7148-2512-3.
4. Neil Fraser, Lighting and Sound. 136 p. £7.95. ISBN
0-7148-2514-X.
5. Stage Management and Theatre Administration, 136 p.
£7.95. ISBN 0-7148-2516-6.
Manuals on theatre practice tend to be a combination of
the mighty obvious and the somewhat unnecessary. This
new series from Phaidon avoids the pitfalls admirably,
offering a proper mixture of sensible procedure and
technical detail that can only be of benefit to the 'non-
IP address: 138.251.14.35
professional' theatre, this being the market targeted in the
Introduction by David Mayer which they all carry.
Not least of the virtues is a special attention to safety
matters, from advice not to hang on to a flying bar if it
goes out of control to a logo flashed at the top of any page
dealing with potentially dangerous areas of work. Layout
and presentation are throughout models of clarity. Apart
from the Introduction, there is a common section in each
volume on production scheduling plus lists of suppliers
and a glossary of jargon. There is also a single bibliography,
though this is less eclectic than eccentric. Is there really
room in a director's library of five works only for Brecht on
Theatre or Hodgson's Improvisation!
Comprehensive as they are, the individual titles do
leave some questions to be asked. Why should Stage
Management and Theatre Administration share a volume
when the former seems cramped and the latter omits any
information on subsidy and sponsorship? And why is
Michael McCaffery so prescriptive over how to hold
auditions in Directing a Play when he is aware of the need
for flexibility in other places? These may be quibbles in the
main context, but there is a more serious problem common
to all five volumes and that is one of demarcation. It is
difficult to see why details of the counterweight system
should appear under Stage Design but not under Stage
Management. Knots do not seem to be dealt with in either
section, but turn up peripherally under Lighting, where a
clovehitch is recommended for tying cable to a bar (a
practice anyway frowned upon in many circles, for the
heat it can generate). Masks are ignored under Costume
and Make Up, only to feature in Stage Design and Properties.
Some cross-referencing would have helped.
Such objections are minor in the face of the shared
understanding by the authors that some practices will vary
according to circumstance and individual bent. A sturdy
case is made throughout for research and cooperation at
all times and there is a huge amount of information. If the
excellent sections on colour (in colour) and a wealth of
illustration have contributed to the high cost — nearly £40
for the set of five - it would be difficult to think of
anywhere else where so much advice is stored on fabric
types, tool-stores, copywriting, pyrotechnics, even a
wonderful 'trouble-shooters' guide to fit-ups'. Valuable
stuff and, unusually, the five volumes serve well as a set or
individually. j . MICHAEL WALTON
/. C. Bulman and H. R. Coursen, eds.
Shakespeare on Television
Hanover, USA: University Press of New England, 1988.
324 p.
ISBN 0-87451-442-8.
An anthology of essays, many of which were originally
conceived and written for a context other than this
edition, always runs the risk of being seen to be on one
hand opportunistic, and on the other guilty of divorcing
the essays from their original context and so robbing the
reader of much of the work's significance. However, many
of these fears are allayed in this book by the focus offered
- a focus not available previously, because many of the
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commentaries were, in their original form, not specifically
part of a study of the television medium. The volume
ranges wide, ideologically, on the subject of 'Shakespeare'
(cultural materialism to Shakespeare Institute) and offers
the student a number of fascinating insights into the
medium of television in all its structural contexts (the
building of scenes to programming schedules, both here
and in the USA). Inevitably some of the documents
reprinted from previous publications have had to be edited
down, but even so this anthology offers, for the time
being, the best of 'Shakespeare on television' criticism in
a form ideally suited (both editorially and financially) to
the student of such matters.
CHRISTOPHER MCCULLOUGH
Anthony Davies
Filming Shakespeare's Plays
Cambridge University Press, 1988. 219 p. £25.00.
ISBN 0-521-33508-6.
One could be forgiven for thinking that, on the evidence
of this and many other volumes, there were only four
directors who had ever tackled the problem of adapting
Shakespeare's plays for the cinema: Olivier, Welles, Brook,
and Kurosawa. It seems to be a problem yet to be
addressed that the centrality afforded to these four
directors effectively marginalizes the vast amount of
'Shakespeare films' undertaken since the inception of
cinematographic art. That having been said, this volume
represents a serious critical analysis of six plays as film:
Henry V, Hamlet, Richard III (Olivier); Macbeth, Othello
(Welles); King Lear (Brook), and two adaptations: Chimes
at Midnight (Welles) and The Throne of Blood (Kurosawa).
The central chapters focus on the plays as film and
prosecute an effective and thorough practical criticism,
almost shot by shot. The first chapter ('Theatrical and
Cinematic Space') and the last ('The Film Actor') offer a
theoretical introduction to problems seen to be intrinsic to
the medium, but do not have the space (or perhaps the
inclination) to comment upon complex cultural issues such
as textual identity. In this book 'theatrical and cinematic
space' does not necessarily include a concept such as
'cultural space'! CHRISTOPHER MCCULLOUGH
Peter Hay
Theatrical Anecdotes
New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1988.
351 p.
ISBN 0-19-503818-5.
There is nothing new in bringing together a collection of
stories about the theatre business. But this book differs
from its predecessors in a number of ways: it is not
randomly eclectic; it is free of sentimental adulation of
stars; and it does not confine itself primarily to anecdotes
of the famous. Rather, it is carefully organized, reliable in
its documentation, and comprehensive, seeking to en-
compass the whole world of theatre. But it is not necessary
to be a theatre specialist to enjoy this collection of tales,
307
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