The New York Times Book Review, Robin Lippincott
Robert Brustein is an elegant and eloquent voice in the wilderness of contemporary American culture.
From Booklist
Once one of the most vocal proponents of risky, status quo^-shaking theater in such quintessential 1960s-era writings as those in
The Theatre of Revolt (1964) and
Making Scenes (1981), Brustein in recent years has fought a rearguard action against multiculturalism and those who would use theater to advance social and political causes. Yet he is no cultural conservative of the Hilton Kramer^-John Simon stamp and in many ways remains an old-style Kennedy-Johnson liberal. You never really know which side of an issue he will land on, which drives his more doctrinaire detractors crazy--and makes him fascinating. In this collection of witty, tightly written essays, most dated 1996 and 1997, Brustein gleefully gores sacred cows left and right, chiding the right for stifling the National Endowment for the Arts and the left for its superstitious belief in the power of art to affect social change. The first third of the book contains Brustein's thoughts on race and politics and the ongoing culture war, in particular Brustein's feud with August Wilson regarding white and black theaters, which culminated in a public debate in early 1997. The rest of the book contains trenchant, exceptionally well-written theater reviews and miscellaneous writings on theater, notably a eulogy of the Group Theatre founder, Stella Adler.
Jack Helbig
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