HE IMPOSSIBLE THEATER

by Herbert Blau ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

As every buff, knows, the American theater is awful. Thus, not surprisingly, Herbert Blau's dramaturgical manifesto opens at full destructive blast (""The purpose of this book is to talk up a revolution"") and goes on and on, though not always so strenuously. Beneath the war paint, Blau, a professor, critic and director of the San Fransisco Workshop, makes some frankly perceptive and/or provocative remarks. Although his dissection is boondoggled with culture-crisis citations and cold war referents, and although his prescriptions aren't much more than perfervid pleas for an artistic and intellectual coming of age, his interpretations are often intriguing. They deal with certain key works, figures and modernisms (Lear, Mother, Courage, Genet, the Absurd, the Group Theatre). It's a personalized book from a bookish personality swinging to the current craze of commitment, which in itself is all right; only a lot of combative sociology piles up, sometimes in the strangest fashion, e.g.; ""Recommended reading: (Genet's) The Maids as a minority view of our relations with Cuba."" A work not discussed shows up Balu's limitations; this is Abel's Matatheatre which successfully synthesized a thorough and thoroughly new approach to stagecraft, especially tragedy. Blau in his over-concern with contemporaneity talks a good storm but not a revolution; nevertheless, one hopes his live, lunging polemic hits the dull ears of Broadway again and again.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1964

Categories: NONFICTION