Review by Choice Review
Frame's history of the major Russian institutional theaters of drama, opera, and ballet runs like a not very red thread through years of fin de si`ecle change, war, and revolutionary upheaval. Frame investigates the degree to which court affiliation, state financing, and censorship inculcated a cultural orthodoxy that made these theaters the standard against which Russian theatrical avant-gardism defined itself and rebelled. Although their educational and symbolic role impeded their artistic reform, the theaters employed some great actors, directors, and designers and provided useful organizational paradigms. By considering the rituals of privileged theater going, analyzing why particular plays were and were not included in the dramatic repertoire, and noting how these artists under state scrutiny at times flirted with autonomy, Frame allows the ambiguous identity of the cultural enterprise to emerge. Ultimately, the author cannot rescue the state theaters from Lenin's assessment of them as a "neutral entity," and the reader grows nostalgic for the turmoil of artistic experimentalism and political advocacy here kept largely at bay. Frame provides a useful if modest survey of questions about and perspectives on a topic that Western scholarship on Russian theater has relegated to the background. An appendix of repertory titles and notes are included. Upper-division undergraduates and above. S. Golub; Brown University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
