Review by Choice Review
Every student of theater has learned the name Meyerhold in connection with an enigmatic early 20th-century system of acting and production called "bio-mechanics." However, little has been known in depth and less taught about the man known as the Picasso of the stage or about his pioneering contributions in the creation of a new poetry for the stage. Meyerhold's new art form, theories of acting, and the constructs of a poetic mise-en-scene are explored in this remarkably readable volume. Leach has explicated the secrets of Meyerhold's system in a scholarly and literate work with extensive descriptions, photographs, and the documentary evidence of colleagues in letters, diaries, notes, etc. Meyerhold was almost Wagnerian in his attempt to unify "all forms of art, under whose spell men would reach an emotional union," and his work is seen as contrasting with the surface realism of Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theatre as well as presaging the work of such other experimenters as Piscator, Brecht, and agitprop radicals. Although not writing a biographical chronology, the author has appended an important chronological chart as part of a useful critical apparatus including a select bibliography and notes for each chapter. The text is richly annotated with black-and-white photographs. Useful for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students in theater. -R. F. Falk, Lycoming College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
