A companion to the theatre

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33189, 31 March 1973, Page 10

A companion to the theatre

The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre. Edited by Phyllis Hartnoil. Oxford. 640 pp. Select Bibliography. Because the stage is, by its very nature, ephemeral, a theatre dictionary probably needs more constant revision than any literary reference book, and one’s first impression of this new work is that it gives very reasonable representation to the contemporary scene: Brook, Weiss, Beckett, Gielgud, and Grotowski are all given more than a column (i.e. more than O’Casey, Marlowe, or Aristophanes), and there is good coverage of active dramatists and theatre people, albeit with a strong bias towards the British. Most of these entries are accurate at least until the end of 1970, as is Simon Trussler’s 20page guide to further reading at the end. The actual listing follows the familiar Oxford method of making a separate entry only if there is something reasonably substantial to be said: most entries are at least 100 words, and there is no attempt to list plays under titles. This is probably a good idea, especially when one considers how many entries and cross-references clutter up other similar dictionaries, but there might have been a case for including anonymous works like “Everyman" or group efforts like “O! Calcutta!” The subject entries are particularly comprehensive, with the actual theatres also being

given a good deal of attention, and there are also, of course, listings under playwrights and theatre people; the latter seem to gain a slight advantage from the fact that it takes less time (usually) to perform a play than to write one, and so performers seem to need more space. Random checks found that, of contemporary dramatists, Mrozek, Obaldia, Van Italfie, and Megan Terry are not listed, but no significant omission couid be found before the nineteenth century, although some figures like Nathaniel Lee do not have their chief works mentioned; of the performers, Isabella Glyn seems about the most important to be left out. Inevitably, one searches for a local name, but with little success: Ray Lawler seems the sole representative of the Antipodes, with no mention of Bruce Mason (who. even by British standards, has been very successful as a published playwright) or Merton Hodge (who, in the mid-thirties, set a record for the longest run at the West End). For a light-weight, paper-covered reference book, this volume is probably the best of its type, and even though it is priced significantly above its Penguin equivalents, it is altogether a more useful and scholarly work. It is interesting to consider Phyllis Hartnell's prefatorial remark that “This is perhaps the last time that a reference book on the theatre will be able to ignore to some extent the allied arts of film, radio, and television.” One wonders, though, whether she may not be already too late —it seems odd to find a reference to Orson Welles which does not name any of his films, and one cannot but be surprised at the exclusion of figures like Charles Laughton and Ingmar Bergman, presumably because they are best known for their films. Of course, Richard Burton is handsomely represented—he is, after all, the grand old patron of Oxford theatre. REPRINTS AND NEW EDITIONS The Princess Casamassima. By Henry James. The Bodley Head. 618 pp. The tenth volume of the elegantly produced Bodley Head edition of Henry James contains, as usual, an introduction by Leon Edel, whose untiring labours on behalf of the Master are perhaps responsible for his incapacity any longer to view James’s work with critical clarity and detachment. Concerning himself in his short essay with the accuracy of James’s treatment of anarchists and workingclass life, he misses entirely the point that the novel is about the nature of political consciousness, and that James understood it much better than many more overtly political writers. James's own preface makes quite clear his attitude to the importance of external facts: “if you haven’t, for fiction, the root of the matter in you, haven’t the sense of life and the penetrating imagination, you are a fool in the very presence of the revealed and assured.” James was no fool, and his remark places Edel with uncomfortable precision.