Gerald D. Parker. How to Play: The Theatre of James Reaney

Abstract

In his often impressive but uneven new study of James Reaney's theatrical development, Gerald D. Parker cites two disparate responses to the 1960 premiere of The Kildeer. Mavor Moore enthused that it was 'likely to become an historic event-and perhaps even the most important one in contemporary Canadian arts and letters,' whereas Nathan Cohen characteristically grumbled, 'The Kildeer is a desperately bad play.' One of the paradoxes of Reaney's career is that, while writing some desperately bad plays, he also created some of the central events in the modem Canadian theatre, his Donnelly trilogy paramount among them. Another paradox is that for all Reaney's acclaim as one of our most important playwrights, his plays themselves are almost never remounted professionally: not one of the major plays examined by Parker from the works of the early 1960s to Reaney's last full-length non-musical, Gyroscope (1980), appears among the thousands of productions documented in Canada on Stage since 1984. Though addressing this paradox is one of the many things Parker's book does not do, what it does do well provides ample reason for welcoming to the all too short list of books on Canadian playwriting.