Review by Choice Review
The title of this book sounds promising, suggesting that this will be a close study of popular entertainments by, for, and about women. To a certain extent, the book delivers. There are revealing investigations of such British entertainments as Calendar Girls, Grumpy Old Women, and Marisa Carnesky's Ghost Train, and internationally populist pieces such as Mamma Mia! and the new burlesque. Most of the narrative, however, is interrupted by a steady stream of internal citations, crediting virtually every theorist of the 20th century for helping to unpack hidden feminisms within the work. Some of this is useful, of course--particularly the reading by Aston and Harris (both, Lancaster Univ., UK) of how second-wave feminists were excoriated by latter-day feminist performance artists. All too often, however, readers yearn for a deeper window into the performances themselves and wish the authors had followed their own good advice to pay attention to women in the theater, "trusting to the way they might be piecing together their own feminisms." Although they claim to be interested in the "mainstream good-night-out-for-the-girls show," this highly academic, theoretical tome takes all the fun out of it. They provide an excellent bibliography and index to advance further scholarship on the topic. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. M. S. LoMonaco Fairfield University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
