On Stage
TRENDS IN 20TH CENTURY DRAMA. By Frederick LumleY. (Rockliff, 30s.) MR. LUMLEY set himself a formidable task in attempting a general assessment of the aims and achievements of recent dramatists; and a much simpler task in gathering and editing a bunch of essays by different writers on the state of the Theatre today. Yet his Trends in 20111 Century Drama is the more striking of the two. Surveys of this kind are often irritating; even with the best of them, the feeling is that the author is axe-grinding a, worse, inserting his own prejudices while ostensibly engaged In impartial analysis. Mr. Lumley, of course, has his own views; but they neither obtrude nor sidle in at the back door. Nor does he seek to blind with science in cases where straightforward exposition might reveal gaps in his knowledge or taste. He refuses to discuss whether lonescu's works should be considered as 'plays of metaphysical situation' (as one critic in Theatre in Review calls them), or as propter-existentialist, or merely as bogus: he simply ignores them—I like to think deliberately.
Theatre in Review is something that we ought to have had long since, and which will henceforth, I trust, be available annually: a theatrical bedside book. It consists of articles and essays, some light, some tendentious, by critics (Philip Hope-Wallace, Eric Blom, T. C. Worsley, Gerard Fay, Anthony Hartley, Alan Dent, lain Hamilton), producers (John Fernald, Michael St. Denis, John Moody), playwrights and other writers around the field. Only one actor, I am sorry to see : but then Yvonne Mitchell's piece 'The Actor's Point of View' is one of the best in the book.
My only quarrel with this symposium is that Mr. Lumley in his preface claims that it is not just a bedside book, but 'a collection of essays which discuss the vital problems of the theatre.' Some of them do; but as a serious survey it is patchy. For example, it only skirts the fringes of the international theatre with pieces by Michael St. Denis (it is pleasant to hear about his activities again) and 'Notes from Norway' : nothing from America, Germany, Italy, or Russia. Some of the articles, too, are lightweight, judged by any serious standards of criticism. No: it is as a bedside book that it should be read, and lent, and Its non-return made the subject of rude telephone calls. Next Year, perhaps, the editor will make it rather more comprehensive; giving himself more space by removing the extracts from old Plays, some of which 1 could only conclude were inserted as Awful Warnings. And he should not prate about the vital problems.
BRIAN INGLIS
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