BOOK REVIEWED: Modern Theatres 1950–2020, edited by David Staples with drawings by David Hamer. New York and London: Routledge, 2021.Alain Badiou, in “Rhapsody for the Theatre” (1990), divided the world into societies that have theatre and those that do not. Those in the former group, he observed, “know this strange public place, where fiction is consumed as a repeatable event.”1 Badiou, in his essay, places fairly rigid limits on what constitutes theatre, but I think we can allow these “strange places” to encompass all kinds of live performance, both visual and auditory. All live performance must occur somewhere: there must be a performance venue, and these venues are, indeed, strange places. They exist within a society, yet separate from it, temporarily isolating a fragment of the population to watch or listen to a specifically created work of art. The venues—theatres, opera houses, concert halls, and the like—have a particular appeal for historians. Performance, by definition ephemeral and semiotically complex, is notoriously difficult to document and describe; but theatre architecture is tangible. Even when incomplete, as in the ruins of ancient Greek and Roman theatres, or the foundations of the Rose Theatre in London, these structures can be touched, measured, photographed, and x-rayed, thus lending themselves to academic study and analysis.Until the late-nineteenth century, most theatres evolved organically, by which I mean that they emerged through a combination of the needs of the performers and spectators, the demands of the work, the given factors of the performance site, and the function of the theatre within the social milieu. Architectural or dramatic theory was seldom, if ever, a factor. But starting with Wagner and the Bayreuth Festspielhaus in 1876, as well as the work of William Poel and others at about the same time to recreate a Shakespearean theatre, theory did, in fact, become the basis for much theatre architecture. And as new technologies developed in the twentieth century, along with a belief that the spectator experience could be scientifically enhanced and controlled, it was sometimes these technologies themselves that literally shaped new performance venues.Because theatres are often grandiose and visually striking, they make wonderful subjects for visually appealing books. But it has been modern theatres—those shaped by theory and technology—that have generated the most publication, perhaps because the theatres can be presented within the context of their theoretical origins. Important analytical compendiums of modern theatres have been written by George Izenour, Christos Athanasopulos, Hannelore Schubert, Gaelle Breton, and Lanzarini and Muffato, among others. Modern Theatres 1950–2020 is the latest entry into that genre.This beautifully produced book, edited by theatre consultant David Staples, looks at thirty “significant” performance venues from sixteen countries built between 1950–2010, beginning with the Royal Festival Hall in London and ending with the Guangzhou Opera House in China. In addition, there are “snapshots” of twenty more from 2009–2020. There is also an introductory section consisting of thirteen thematic essays by scholars, journalists, architects, theatre consultants, engineers, acousticians, and technicians. The thirty theatres were chosen in part to allow a geographical diversity, though it is dominated by European and North American structures. The “snapshot” section adds a few more Asian countries to the mix. But of the fifty theatres total, there is only one from South America (Oscar Niemeyer’s Auditório Ibirapuera in São Paulo) and none from Africa. The cutoff date of 2010 was based on the notion that it generally takes several years after a theatre opens to work out the kinks and to make a thorough evaluation. Other criteria used to select the theatres in the book—what makes them significant—includes iconoclastic architecture, but more important is innovative and transformative design that influenced subsequent spaces. The most notable example of this criterion was Hans Scharoun’s “vineyard” design for the auditorium of the Philharmonie Berlin in 1963. A sort of theatre-in-the-round for music, it became prototype for future concert halls. It creates a much more intimate experience for concertgoers, though not everyone is pleased with the resultant acoustics. Similarly, the Arena Stage in Washington, DC (Harry Weese, architect) helped popularize the theatre-in-the-round for dramatic theatre. Several theatres were selected because of the way they transformed a city, becoming a catalyst for urban revival, the so-called “Bilbao bounce.” The Sydney Opera House in Australia is one example, as well as the much more modest Lowry in Salford, UK. Three dance theatres—Sadler’s Wells, the Joyce, and the Lucent Danstheater in The Hague—are included in part for their overall contribution to developments in dance.There are, of course, numerous photos of interiors and exteriors, along with plans and sections (drawn by David Hamer). But many of the images of auditoria demonstrate a typical contradiction: they depict pristine spaces devoid of spectators—good for seeing details of the space—but thereby creating an eerily desolate and sterile environment, the exact opposite of what a theatre should be. Each entry is accompanied by an essay providing background, history, social and architectural context, and analysis. These are useful and often fascinating narratives, but here, too, there is a presumably unintentional irony. Rather than a celebration of these venues, the book, with some notable exceptions, documents half a century of shortcomings, mistakes, and downright disasters. We are told again and again of staggering cost overruns, completion dates missed by years, disagreements between architects and clients, fights between architects and acousticians (Frank Gehry, architect of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, supposedly said, “In the design of a concert hall, the acoustician lays down the rules and the designer then struggles to make architecture of his instructions”), unanticipated structural and engineering problems, the discovery—after construction has commenced—of severe issues with the geology of the building site (see, for example, the Arts Centre in Melbourne), complications with local politics, and repeated instances of poor acoustics (see the Teatro Regio in Turin), mechanical problems, and inhospitable proportions (see the Olivier Theatre in London’s National Theatre complex designed by Denys Lasdun).Berlin’s Schaubühne am Lehiner Platz, designed by Jürgen Sawade, was intended to be a totally flexible space that could take on multiple configurations through the use of seventy-six “lifting platforms.” But the dimensions of the platforms meant that they usually had to be supplemented by manually placed extensions which defeated the flexibility and created significant labor issues. The Opéra Bastille in Paris, designed by Carlos Ott, had high quality technical facilities, but as Michel da Costa Gonçalves notes in his accompanying essay, the building “suffers from the poor quality of its urban and public presence,” and he refers to it as “a generic container.” And on and on. There are, to be sure, successful examples, and I will return to those.An underlying issue for many of the examples presented in the book is the question of what is the purpose for building the theatre and what is its role in the overall urban landscape. In his essay, “Theatres and Publicness,” architect Boštjan Vuga discusses “extroverted” versus “introverted” theatres. The latter serves only one purpose, the presentation of performance, which occurs in the core of the building “safely hidden from the urban life outside.” While the foyer of such a theatre may serve as a transition space from public to private, its “publicness” is limited. Vuga argues for making theatres more “porous,” creating truly public spaces that can be in use even when the theatre itself is dark; less elitist and “more democratic, socially inclusive.” His several examples include the Elbphilharmonie Plaza in Hamburg, the outdoor space of the Winspear Opera House in Dallas, and the publicly accessible roof of the Operahuset in Oslo. There is certainly value in this, but Vuga does not address how this relates to the primary function of the theatre, as if the theatre is auxiliary to the public space. It also assumes a degree of spaciousness that dense urban centers may not possess. In this and other essays, and in several of the theatres presented in the book, what becomes clear is that sometimes the fundamental aspect of theatre—the stage and its relation to the spectators—becomes a secondary consideration.The most famous example of this conundrum is Australia’s Sydney Opera House, designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon. It is an architectural marvel, and it became as iconic of Sydney as other world monuments such as the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty. Its unique design of fourteen “shells” (each a section of a sphere) rises some sixty-five meters above Sydney Harbor. When it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2007, the report declared, with unrestrained hyperbole, that it was “one of the indisputable masterpieces of human creativity, not only in the 20th century, but in the history of humankind.” But as David Staples writes with devastating understatement in his accompanying essay, “as an opera house and concert hall it is severely flawed.” The shells—that is, the exterior structure—determined the shape and size of the performance spaces, forcing the opera theatre into the smaller of the two main spaces, with the larger one for orchestral performances. Not surprisingly, there were serous acoustical problems in both spaces. Development and construction became a sixteen-year marathon (1957–1973) during which time Utzon left the project. The building, like so many others in the book, has recently undergone an enormously expensive renovation.While many of the introductory essays and the texts discussing the specific theatres acknowledge the costs of the design and construction of these theatres, none really examines the full implications. Most of the theatres cost tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of dollars, often drawing on taxpayer funding and the infrastructural resources of a city. In that regard, they are not unlike Olympic stadiums that may bring prestige to a city but will ultimately be a drain on finances and resources. Are there better ways to spend that money on the arts? And ultimately, who are these monumental structures for? Despite the talk of democratizing the audience, more often than not they remain part of an elitist arts establishment.The essay that stood out for me was by theatre and design consultant Joshua Dachs who, with wit and erudition, addressed many of these issues. He begins with the simple, and one would hope obvious, assertion that “Theatre Artists are the principal drivers of innovation and change in theatre architecture.” Not architects, not theoreticians, not politicians, not donors, not even consultants. But the majority of examples in the book seem to contradict Dachs’s statement. He confronts the attempts over the years, mostly unsuccessful, to create totally flexible theatres, pointing out that “any system is inherently constraining, and total flexibility is labor intensive and defies simple mechanization.” He talks about the unfortunate trend that started in the mid-twentieth century toward larger and larger theatres that seemingly forgot the effect of scale on perception. “It was an era of big cars, big hair, and big theatres.” He takes on the modernist impulse toward transparency which resulted in auditoriums that “were treated as solid objects floating in open voids, encased in glass … [with] monolithic, amorphous open spaces.” Pulling no punches, he declares that “modernism produced some of the worst theatres seen in centuries—perhaps ever.” Ultimately, he urges the re-examination and adaptation of older forms that have proved successful, notably the courtyard-style theatres, based on eighteenth-century English theatres, championed by British architect Iain Macintosh. And, in fact, it is such theatres that come off best in this book.Among those that fare well are the thrust stages designed by Tanya Moiseiwitsch for the Festival Theatre at Stratford, Ontario and Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, UK with their influences from Greek and early modern English theatres; the Arena Stage in Washington, DC; the Cottesloe in the National Theatre Complex in London—the first of the modern courtyard theatres; the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester with its circular steel-framed module set in the midst of an old trading hall—three tiers of seats, none more than thirty feet from the modest-sized stage; and the Joyce Theatre in New York, designed by Hugh Hardy in an old movie theatre, “built by dancers for dance.”This is not to say that none of the purpose-built and architecturally innovative theatres work—several do. But ultimately the examples in this book and the accompanying commentary seem to suggest that the most successfully functioning theatres and concert halls, the ones that connect most closely with the communities they serve, are ones that are more intimate, ones that re-use or repurpose existing structures or borrow from successful historical examples, ones, frankly, that are not the result of experimentations by architects with limited experience designing performance venues.Most publications these days will have the occasional typo and they are rarely worth mentioning. However, I cannot leave this review without pointing out one of the most startling copyediting errors I have ever encountered. The start of the essay on the Disney Concert Hall begins with Gertrude Stein’s famous 1937 quote about Oakland, “There is no there there.” In the essay it is attributed to feminist writer and activist Gloria Steinem who, if nothing else, would have been three years old at the time.