Good Book Reviews in Theatre for This Play
T heatre is the most evanescent of arts. That may exist one reason why then many people have sought to pin downwards its magic in words. But in choosing my favourite books on the subject, I have deliberately confined myself to the past 100 years. I have, however, included a wide range: fiction, biography, diaries, messages and lectures showing how theatre stimulates writers in unlike ways. I've excluded Shakespeare, since the territory is and then vast, and books of reviews. But if anyone is impatient to read a collection of old clippings, my own choice of Guardian theatre pieces from 1992 to 2020, Affair of the Heart, is published by Methuen in October. So here, in reverse chronological gild, are my top 10 books on the avoiding art. 1. Actress by Anne Enright two. Tom Stoppard past Hermione Lee iii. Finishing the Hat past Stephen Sondheim
This vivid novel is about a daughter's quest for the truth nearly her female parent, legendary Irish gaelic histrion Katherine O'Dell. Just the emotional journeying is anchored in theatrical particular. We learn of Katherine'south beginnings with Anew McMaster's touring company, of her mesmerising stillness on phase, of her ability to milk a curtain telephone call ("that immigration of her gaze as though realising the audience had been there – oh my goodness! – all along"). Enright also pins down the penalties of fame: Katherine becomes a national icon through a Idiot box ad for butter and, at 51, winds up stark naked in an avant garde product.
Lee is all-time known for her biographies of Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton and Penelope Fitzgerald, but she brings her chapters for exhaustive research and perceptive analysis to Stoppard and the upshot is highly revealing. By linking the plays and the life, she shows that Stoppard, ofttimes characterised every bit the ideas homo of British theatre, is a circuitous romantic rather than a cerebral gymnast: works such as Jumpers, Arcadia and In the Native Country drum with emotion. Lee as well reminds us that, as a "bounced Czech", Stoppard initially idealised his adopted country just at present feels the need to write "obsequies for the England we have mislaid".
This is non but a collection of Sondheim's lyrics from 1954 to 1981 but a critical commentary on them by their author. I can't retrieve of any theatre book that gives and then clear a picture of the creative procedure: Sondheim reveals that his greatest striking, Send in the Clowns, was written in brusk breathy phrases, made up of questions rather than statements, because its original performer, Glynis Johns, was unable to sustain a notation. Sondheim is sometimes harsh on beau lyricists but this is even so the one indispensable volume virtually musical theatre.
iv. Secret Dreams: A Biography of Michael Redgrave past Alan Strachan
After Olivier, Redgrave was my favourite actor: even at 50, the best Village I ever saw, a great Antony, a peerless Uncle Vanya. Alan Strachan's biography, relating Redgrave's genius for playing divided characters to his bisexuality, does justice to his complication. But information technology also shows how he brought meticulous research and a sophisticated intelligence to everything he did: before playing Shylock at Stratford, Redgrave explored the Amsterdam synagogues and he theorised well-nigh his craft in a stimulating set of lectures, The Actor'south Ways and Means, that quoted from Longinus, Aristotle and Diderot.
5. Mrs Hashemite kingdom of jordan'south Profession past Claire Tomalin
Tomalin's book is a fascinating study of Dora Hashemite kingdom of jordan who, alongside Mrs Siddons, dominated the Georgian phase. It is also a slice of history showing how a woman of independent spirit was maltreated by the majestic establishment. Mrs Hashemite kingdom of jordan's profession was acting: she played Rosalind, Viola and Imogen, appeared in scores of forgotten comedies, was adored by Coleridge, Lamb and Hazlitt, who wrote that "her smile had the effect of sunshine". Simply, by the age of 45, she had borne 13 children, 10 of them to the Duke of Clarence who subsequently became William IV. What is staggering is her devotion to her profession, her concrete resilience and her power to ascent above her ultimate rejection.
6. Joan'south Book by Joan Littlewood
A statue of Joan Littlewood stands outside the Theatre Royal Stratford Eastward but generations accept grown upwardly that never saw this pioneering manager's work. Reading her bulky memoir you become an idea of what she achieved: her beginnings in agitprop theatre in Manchester, her postwar founding of Theatre Workshop, which combined political passion and music-hall gaiety and the company'due south dissolution as the commercial theatre plundered its talents. Joan'south memoir is not always reliable only information technology is engrossing and reminds us that this radical pathfinder was a stickler for form. After Shelagh Delaney'south success with A Taste of Honey, Joan tells her to go away and read Ibsen: "Playwriting is a arts and crafts, not just inspiration."
7. Peter Hall's Diaries: The Story of a Dramatic Boxing
This is a dangerous book. Dip into it for x minutes and you'll detect yourself still reading an hour later on. That is because Hall, covering the first half of his 15-year tenure as manager of U.k.'southward National Theatre from 1973 to 1988, is incredibly aboveboard. He records his battles with the media, the Arts Council, the backstage unions, but as well the instant acceptance of the NT by the public. Having created the RSC and brought the National into being, Hall had a massive touch on British theatre. But he emerges from these diaries equally a vulnerable workaholic and as someone of unusual prescience. He has a telling entry for 2 June 1975: "God help united states if the plebiscite goes against Europe."
viii. The Empty Space past Peter Brook
This is arguably the well-nigh influential theatre book of modern times. Generations of students and practitioners have absorbed Brook's division of theatre into four categories – deadly, holy, rough, firsthand – but this is as well a book for the playgoer. Time and once again I am struck by Brook's practical wisdom: that high prices often deter immature theatregoers, that a permanent company is doomed to deadliness without a philosophy, that what remains afterward a performance is a central image. Brook says at the end that his book is already out of engagement: I'd say it is as topical as ever.
9. Ellen Terry and Bernard Shaw: A Correspondence
Reading other people'south letters is always fun: especially when they are as vibrant, witty and impassioned as those written past Shaw and Terry from 1892 to 1922 (they weren't published until 1931, which is why they don't breach my 100-twelvemonth dominion). Shaw in those years moved from militant critic to established dramatist: Terry was, for much of the time, the leading light of Henry Irving's Lyceum theatre. That animates much of the correspondence, since Shaw felt Irving squandered her talents: "He is an ogre who has carried yous off to his cave and now Childe Roland is coming to the dark tower to rescue yous." Terry, for her part, was loyal to Irving but adored Shaw – which is what makes these letters irresistible.
10. The Adept Companions by JB Priestley
Priestley'due south first pop novel has had a long life: it has been turned into a stage play, a movie and a musical. You can see why it has lasted so long: information technology'southward the picaresque story of three people whose lives are magically transformed when they rescue a stranded pierrot-troupe. If information technology remains one of the best e'er theatre novels, it is considering it sets the self-fulfilment of its primal trio against a backdrop of economical depression. You could meet information technology every bit a fictional variant on Priestley's famous travel volume English Journey.
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Matter of the Middle is published past Methuen 0n 21 Oct. Michael Billington will be in word with Sandy Walsh at Crazy Coqs, Brasserie Zedel, London, on 25 October at 7pm.
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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/oct/06/top-10-books-about-theatre-michael-billington
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