Canadian Slavonic Papers

Pierrot in Petrograd: Commedia dell'arte/Balagan in Twentieth-Century Russian Theatre andDrama by J. Douglas ClaytonReview by: W. Gareth JonesCanadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, Vol. 36, No. 3/4, Slavic Theatre:New Perspectives (September-December 1994), pp. 543-544Published by: Canadian Association of SlavistsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40869686 .

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BOOK REVIEWS 543

group shows the beginnings of an avant-garde. Of particular interest are the pictures of the maquette for the experimental project of the Maiakovskii Theatre, a design for a convertible theatre that anticipated a resurgence in theatre audiences.

Autant-Mathieu' s book is an excellent account of Soviet theatre in post-Stalinist Russia. While somewhat long for those seeking only brief descriptions and analyses, it is nevertheless a worthwhile experience for readers who have the time and inclination to read it in its entirety and pore over its many lovely photographs.

Christopher Menu, University of Alberta

J. Douglas Clayton. Pierrot in Petrograd: Commedia ¿fe/ZVirte/Balagan in Twentieth- Century Russian Tiieatre and Drama. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queens' University Press, 1994. xviii, 369 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $49.95, cloth.

Instantly recognizable yet infinitely variable, the French Pierrot certainly infiltrated Russian theatre. It was Meierkhol'd's playing of Pierrot in his own 1906 mis-en-scène of Blok's Balaganchik that prompted him to search out revolutionary theatrical forms. But, despite its main title, this study is not constrained by a narrow focus on the archetypal Pierrot. Its scope is better described in the sub-title: "Commedia <'ç'Y dsizIBalagan in Twentieth-Century Russian Theatre and Drama." Neither is the study satisfied with the narrow definition of balagán. For Clayton, balagán not only signifies a Russian fairground booth or, pejoratively, low farce. Denoting all aspects of early twentieth- century theatre that grew out of modernist experimentation, balagán embraces circus, cabaret, music hall, the early silent screen and even the Japanese theatre which, it is suggested, Eisenstein read as balagán. The advantage of this approach is that a rich diversity of theatrical experimentation can be comprehended from one perspective. Occasionally, however, the catch-all definition draws in, perhaps unconvincingly, some unexpected progenitors and supporters of balagán such as Leo Tolstoi and Chekhov.

More naturally at home within this all-encompassing balagán is the folk tradition of Petrushka. In fact, a whole chapter is devoted to the relationship between the internationally refined Pierrot and the rough, native Petrushka. It is persuasively argued that the Russian modernist theatre owed less to popular street theatre than to drawing- room variants of puppet shows. Its sophisticated exponents, it is suggested, were more likely to have been influenced as children by Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker than by Shrovetide fairgrounds. The transformation of the commedia dell'arte myth by the cosmopolitan European culture inherited by the Russian modernists is well established in the opening chapter. Its reception in Russia was contradictory. Some, such as Tairov, Komissarzhevskii and Evreinov, took delight in the pure theatricality of commedia dell'arte; others, and preeminently Meierkhol'd, enlisted it in the cause of a revolutionary theatre that undermined Stanislavskii's psychological realism. This subversive essence of "commedia dtWartd balagán" in its reaction to Russian social upheaval is indicated throughout. Its explains the astonishing preponderance of "commedia dcìV&rldbalagan" in the revolutionary years between 1917 and 1922, and also the sudden cessation of interest in it with the coming of NEP. Clayton's broad definition of balagán, however, allows him to bring within his purview most of the leading avant-garde playwrights of the 1920s, including Maiakovskii, Zamiatin, Bulgakov and Lunts. The latter' s The Apes are Cowing is one of the six original translations of short plays and scenarios included in an appendix. These examples support the contention that the essential feature yoking commedia dell'arte with balagán is not the presence of traditional figures such as commedia Pierrot and balagán Petrushka, but rather the fact that both commedia and balagán are fixed on metatheatre, plays-within-plays, and theatre about theatre. The

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544 BOOK REVIEWS

extent to which plays such as Maiakovskii's Bedbug and Bulgakov's Molière draw on a commedia dell'arte tradition may be questioned. Much more convincing is the argument at the end that the essence of the tradition was vitally transmitted to the cinematography of Eisenstein.

W. Gareth Jones, University of Wales, Bangor

Nikolay Gogol. Gogol: Plays and Selected Writings. Translated by Milton Ehre and Fruma Gottschalk. Edited, with an Introduction and Notes by Milton Ehre. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1994. xxvi, 205 pp. $13.95, paper. Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy: Plays: Volume One, 1856-1886. Translated by Marvin Kantor with Tanya Tulchinsky. Introduction by Andrew Baruch Wachtel. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1994. xv, 191 pp. $14.95, paper.

Northwestern University Press' addition of Gogol's plays and selected writings on the theatre (originally published in 1980 as The Theatre of Nikolay Gogol: Plays and Selected Writings by the University of Chicago Press) and the first of three volumes of Leo Tolstoy's complete plays to its Drama Classics series represents a significant opening for the English reader into the dramatic work of two nineteenth-century Russian writers known primarily for their prose fiction.

Gogol: Plays and Selected Writings contains the writer's three greatest plays and shows why his grotesquely comic, innovative, sometimes inflammatory, works exerted a strong influence on a number of currents in nineteenth- and twentieth-century theatre - from Ostrovsky's realistic theatre to the symbolists and pre- and post-revolutionary avant-garde. In Marriage (1835-41), the comic convention of resolution and reconcilia- tion effected through the marriage ritual is subverted, and trothing leads rather to dissolu- tion and the self-defenestration of the reluctant groom. The Government Inspector (1836- 41), whose tumultuous reception has invited comparisons with Beaumarchais' Marriage of Figaro in pre-revolutionary France, turns on the comic device of mistaken identity to depict the endemic corruption and incompetence of Russian officialdom. The plot builds consistently to a final vision of "a world frozen by terror" (p. xxv), powerfully captured in Meierkhol'd's famed production in which actors are substituted for life-size mannequins in the closing "dumb show." The third piece is the one-act satire, The Gamblers (1842), the action of which hinges on a card player being played by the very ones whom he thought he was playing for fools. In addition to these complete plays, Milton Ehre and Fruma Gottschalk furnish an appendix containing pertinent selections from Gogol's Notebooks and correspondence on comedy, Russian theatre in the 1830s and his own views on the production of his plays. Included in the appendix are Gogol's dramatized apologia* to The Government Inspector - "Leaving the Theatre After a Performance of a New Comedy" and "The Denouement of The Inspector Generar - which provide the reader with a key to Gogol's work and his theory of laughter. Ehre' s introduction to the collection is broad and informative and features a chronological survey of Gogol's work and an overview of the historical, socio-political and cultural conditions of Russia of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Of particular interest to students of drama wishing a broader contextualization for Gogol's work is Ehre's discussion of Russian theatre and its indebtedness to French classical theatre and Enlightenment figures, as well as the diverse ways in which Gogol's work has been interpreted and produced for the stage. Notes, helpfully explaining translation choices of certain terms and the particularities of the Russian context, and a select bibliography complete the collection.

Gogol's theatrical genius has gone largely unappreciated by English audiences due, in part, to pedantically literal translations that, serving the functional purpose of inform-

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