Theatre of Estrangement: Theatre, Practice, Ideology by Silvija Jestrovic

MLR, 103.3, 2008 8ii have named the Scherzo of Beethoven's Fifth, rather than part ofMahler's First, as the earliest 'daring inclusion of a grotesque movement' in a symphony (p. I54)? In Part iiiSue Asbee and Tom Cooper demonstrate how Kate Chopin makes music and narrative eat into and destabilize each other-leading not necessarily to a 'higher' stability such as (in intention)Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk, but to insight intoour un stable existence. Robert Samuels lucidly interpretsSchumann's narrative song-cycle Frauenliebe und Leben, as awkwardly gendered a piece as any in the literature.The correct bass-note, D, in his Ex. I (not B flat: p. I38) would have strengthened the point he makes about the connecting songs. Mark Byron surveys the use ofmusi cal scores within literary modernism, oddly overlooking Ulysses (and that 'theviolin line' fromJannequin isacknowledged, inPound's Canto Lxxv, as a twentieth-century arrangement might not be known to every reader: see p. 9 I). After these stimulating essays, Part iv is unfortunately less summation than tail ing off,excepting Rosamund Bartlett's musical reading of The Brothers Karamazov. Guillaume Bordry's short study ofBerlioz's Lelio wishfully calls it 'symphonic', di minishing its marked generic difference from the associated Symphoniefantastique (it consists mainly of recycled vocal pieces). That the symphony plus Lelio 'turns the concert into a theatrical form' (p. I5 I) is a seductive notion that deserved a solider musicological foundation. David Crilly'sessay on Britten seemsmusically risky;given recent disputes over themeaning and extent of the 'English Musical Renaissance', he should qualify its 'oppressive stylistic conservatism' (p. I79) by reference toParry and Stanford, for itcannot apply toElgar, Holst, orVaughan Williams. The fanfares inVerdi's and Britten's Requiems, quoted for their resemblance, aremarkedly dis similar, and theboys' choir inBritten is less reminiscent of theparish church than the cathedral or Oxbridge; themelody cited moves in4ths and 5ths about half the time, not 'almost entirely' (p. I84). Five chapters in this interestingbut uneven collection use musical notation, as a score or analytical demonstration, and Kramer's chapter, where no notation is supplied, requires a score to follow the argument. I doubt, how ever,whether this should discourage literaryreadersmore than literary theory should discourage musicologists. UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS JULIAN RUSHTON Theatre ofEstrangement: Theatre, Practice, Ideology. By SILVIJAJESTROVIC. (German and European Studies) Toronto: University ofToronto Press. 2oo6. ix+ I8 Ipp. $55; J35. ISBN 978-o-8020-9068-3. Theatre ofEstrangement offers freshperspectives, on theone hand, on the techniques and underlying rationale of 'making strange' (ostranenie) as interpreted by theRus sian Formalists and extensively deployed by Russian avant-garde dramatists, and, on the other, on anti-illusionist alienation devices associated with Brechtian theatre. The focus on 'historical avant-gardes' of the period 19I0-35 entails a meaningful cut-off point inRussian theatre history, but excludes themature Brecht's seminal Verfremdungstheater.As a consequence, themost rewarding analyses come in the sections on the (largely Futurist) theatre ofKhlebnikov, Kruchenykh, Mayakovsky, andMeyerhold, whereas the treatment of estrangement inBrecht's work tends to be fragmentary and under-illustrated. While stressing the richdiversity ofherRussian material, Silvija Jestrovicobserves thatBrecht's epic theatrehas nevertheless become theaccepted yardstick for modern theatrical estrangement. 'Is Brecht's concept broad enough', she asks, 'tocover all the possibilities of theatrical estrangement and is it transferable to othermedia?' (p. 5). The answer to the firstpart of this question is evidently 'no'. By initially address ing estrangement in the dramas of theRussian avant-garde, Jestrovic's study reveals 8I2 Reviews how varied and ingenious the techniques of estrangement were in the theatre of the period. Hence, the suspicion that 'Brecht's theoryand theatremight be just onemode within a diverse range of avant-garde practices for making the familiar strange' (p. 5) makes a good starting-point, especially when coupled with concerns about which of the historical avant-garde's 'theoretical and aesthetic paradigms could be further applied and reworkedwithin our current contexts' (p. 3). Deliberately, one suspects, this compact survey often postpones answering such questions, choosing instead to leave us todraw our own conclusions. The main strength of Theatre of Estrangement lies in its ability to reactivate the debate about themerits and new possibilities of theatrical defamiliarization. We are shown...

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