From Library Journal
Brown (theater, Univ. of Michigan; associate, National Theatre of Great Britain) edits this scholarly work by 16 specialists who "have chosen what seems most vital in their various parts of the past and have tried to share their sense of its importance and pleasures." They succeed in presenting their respective histories of the theater in the larger literary, social, and political contexts. European and other Western theaters between the Renaissance and 1700 are emphasized, while the earliest theaters of Greece, Rome, Christian Europe, Africa, and the Americas, "World Theater" of the Orient, and theater since 1970 receive far less coverage. But single-volume histories are by definition selective. Further reading and a chronology supplement each chapter. Despite its minute print, this excellent book is highly recommended for all academic and large public libraries with strong theater collections.?Ming-ming Shen Kuo, Ball St. Univ. Lib., Muncie, Ind.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
Well-written, utterly absorbing, this general history of theater provides a remarkably comprehensive overview of world theater, thanks to editor Brown's inspired idea of structuring the book as a series of connected essays. Each article is by a scholar whose expertise corresponds to the topic at hand: Oliver Taplin discusses Greek theater; Martin Esslin, modern theater; Leslie du S. Read, theater in Africa and pre-Columbian America, etc. This strategy avoids the Eurocentrism of many other theater histories, even though most of the book is still concerned with Western theater; for, indeed, some of the complexity and diversity of traditions influencing contemporary drama and performance theory are accurately conveyed. Of course, the chapters are not all equally satisfying: Taplin on the Greeks manages to shed new light on an often discussed topic, whereas Read's too-short section on Africa and the Americas leaves us wanting to know much more about these scarcely discussed non-Western traditions.
Jack Helbig
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