Modernism to Realism on the Soviet Stage by Nick Worrall (review)

Abstract

Book Reviews 575 costumes, to a point where it was unable to see anything at all. But stage design and all that went with it should help the drama take place, not aim to displace it. This argument led fmally to the grand idea that the staging - if not the building itself- should help the audience's awareness and perception. The sense of an audience's being at one with the performers and not just watching them is a modem (and an ancient!) view of theatre that has been pursued in our own day by directors as challenging as Richard Schechner, Joseph Chaikin, and the Becks, to name only a few of those on the North American continent. In Appia's last years, especially after the Great WaI with its appalling losses, his writing was increasingly taken up with the ethical and social, if not actually political, role of dramatic art as he saw it as a source of healing and renewal: the apparent distinction between the artist and his audience would dissolve when together they created their best art. Both books reviewed here are helpful in telling and explaining this story, and are pleasing in their exhibition of many examples of Appia's designs and scenarios. Nevertheless, it remains true that he was long on theory and comparatively short on practice, and Beacham does not really address this issue. We cannot be assured that Appia's work "swept away the foundations that had supported European theatre since the Renaissance" (Essays, p. 3: Theatre Artist, p. 17), nor that before this theatrical art was in a "disastrous state" (Essays, p. 3). The endless ramps and steps that Appia's sketches convey to us are somewhat uncritically accepted, being presented chiefly in description and not analysis. And it can be readily seen that such abstract sets would be serviceable to only a limited range of productions and a very few genres - the Spie/treppe (Jessnertreppe) that became the vogue were a notorious invitation to histrionic mountaineering. Nevertheless. these books mustjoin the others of importance on the story of twentieth-century theatre. J. L. STYAN, NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY NICK WORRALL. Modernism to Realism on the Soviet Stage. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989. pp. 238, illustrated. $49.50. Perhaps theatre scholars owe Mikhail Gorbachev a debt of gratirude. Thanks to the more flexible policies of glasllost and perestroika, fewer obstacles stand in the path of historians who wish to work in Soviet archives and, as a result, interest in Russian and Soviet theatre has revived. Recently published scholarship on Russian theatre includes Nick WorraU' sModernism to Realism 011 the Soviet Stage, a study ofdirectors Alexander Tairov, Yevgeny Vakhtangov, and Nikolai Okhlopkov. Although Worrall slips in an occasional personal anecdote, the book is primarily a descriptive study of selected productions by these three directors. It includes a very useful "Table of Historical and Theatrical Events," a general introduction, a chapter on each director, and a selected bibliography. Readers familiar with Konstantin Rudnitski 's glorious Russian and Soviet Theatre: 1905-1932 may find Worrall's treatment of Book Reviews Russian modernism rather thin by comparison. Nonetheless, Realism to Modernism on the Soviet Stage is a useful contribution to the growing body of literature about Russian and Soviet theatre and should be of interest to Worrall's designated audience: the "general reader. " The chapters on Tairov and Vakhtangov are particularly intriguing. Perhaps because the tendency in the West is toward commercial theatre, many Western practitioners look with suspicion upon Russian artists who were, as Worra11 puts it, "artistic fanatics." We do not share the reverential attit~de toward theatre that was commonplace in Russia even among many provincial actors. The "religiosity" of Stanislavski's single-minded devotion to theatre is well known and this attitude was adopted by directors like Tairov and Vakhtangov, both ofwhorn displayed a passion for theatre that may, at least in the eyes of Western observers, transcend the bounds of reason. Worrall observes that Alexander Tairov never achieved the international recognition he deserved - indeed, Tairov may be the most underrated director of this century. As cofounder and artistic director of the Kamerny Theatre, Tairov attempted "to forge a theatre of pure aesthetics, founded on...