The Provincetown Players and the Culture of Modernity, and: Expressionism and Modernism in the American Theatre: Bodies, Voices, Words (review)

Reviewed by: The Provincetown Players and the Culture of Modernity, and: Expressionism and Modernism in the American Theatre: Bodies, Voices, Words Martha S. LoMonaco Brenda Murphy . The Provincetown Players and the Culture of Modernity. Cambridge Studies in American Theatre and Drama series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. 302, illustrated. $85.00/£48 (Hb). Julia A. Walker . Expressionism and Modernism in the American Theatre: Bodies, Voices, Words. Cambridge Studies in American Theatre and Drama series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. 312, illustrated. $85.00/£48 (Hb). Don Wilmeth's fine series in American Theatre and Drama at Cambridge University Press recently published two titles of interest to enthusiasts of modern American drama. Both focus on the larger sociocultural aspects of modernism and modernity in the early twentieth century and on how drama and theatre developed as a natural consequence of what Murphy, in her introduction to The Provincetown Players and the Culture of Modernity, characterizes as "the swiftly changing currents of American avant-garde thought during this period" (xiii). While Murphy confines her investigation to modernist influences on those artists and writers affiliated with the Provincetown Players and its various offshoots, Walker, in Expressionism and Modernism in the American Theatre: Bodies, Voices, Words, considers the broader question of how dramaturgy developed as a uniquely American idiom, specifically through the short-lived but vibrant expressionist movement. Both studies, which are meticulously researched, question the long-standing belief that modern American drama was largely derivative of European models, in light of the plethora of influences - not only from the arts, but also from philosophy, [End Page 525] literature, the sciences, and education - that helped shape the plays and productions of the new century. As the first comprehensive portrait of the Players within the larger context of the times from which they emerged, Murphy's book fills a gap in the Provincetown literature. She draws heavily upon the major and much of the minor published research but expands her view to consider the myriad influences, including the work of William James, John Dewey, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud as well as new trends in political and feminist thought, that shaped the personal, artistic, and political ethos of the Players. Although the point has been made before, Murphy emphasizes that Glaspell and O'Neill, the two great playwrights to emerge from the group, began as equal if not unexceptional members of this eclectic collective of artists, writers, and political activists who, through amateur forays into Greenwich Village and Cape Cod, managed to create America's first significant producing art theatre. Although Glaspell and O'Neill are afforded a separate chapter, Murphy devotes considerable attention to the plays of lesser known figures, such as Alfred Kreymborg and Wilbur Daniel Steele, and to such writers as John Reed, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Wallace Stevens, who had plays produced at Provincetown but who are better remembered today for their politics and poetry. Murphy also discusses the considerable contributions of Provincetown's visual artists, particularly the work of William and Marguerite Zorach, whose experiments in modernist scenography and play direction in Louise Bryant's The Game and Kreymborg's Lima Beans were some of the Players' most truly avant-garde creations. Murphy's extensive scholarship affords a more balanced portrait of the Players and their work than do many previous studies and helps to contextualize the legends surrounding the group's beginnings, particularly regarding the early work of Eugene O'Neill. A good example is her description of the premiere of O'Neill's first play, Bound East for Cardiff, which, thanks largely to Susan Glaspell's laudatory account in her memoir, The Road to the Temple, has "assumed the status of legend" (79). Murphy is careful to weigh Glaspell's generous reminiscences against those of poet Harry Kemp, who claims that Bound East was actually the second play O'Neill offered the group, since the first, The Movie Man, had been rejected, and of founding member Hutchins Hapgood, whose description of the play's initial reading and acceptance is far more mundane than Glaspell's. Murphy makes the point that, although the slight differences in the account are not all that significant in themselves, "the...

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