Yury Lyubimov at the Taganka Theatre, 1964-1994 /

This sober, well-researched, and informed survey considers one of the great contemporary artistic marriages, a notable barometer of Soviet Russia's cultural climate in the last several decades. Beumers (Univ. of Bristol, UK) highlights the Taganka's metaphoric treatments of the individual's role in society and the theater's responsibility to its audience, the humanistic (and Christian) tradition of great Russian literature, and the at-risk intelligentsia who created it. The author's brief but meaningful political backgrounds illuminate artistic choices and explicate dramaturgical and scenic plans, chronicling Lyubimov's aesthetics-over-politics approach from Brechtian alienation to musical symbolism at home and abroad. Includes production photographs and valuable appendixes devoted to Lyubimov's and the theater's production histories, the Taganka's personnel, and the State and Party apparatus that determined its fate. Select international bibliography. A valuable resource for those interested in theater and in the intersection of arts and politics. All collections. S. Golub Brown University