Book review

Gambit: International Theatre Review
The Signature Series of Playscripts

Reviewed by BRIAN McNEILL

As a publishing house Calder & Boyars have always been risk takers. International by choice, private and selective in subject matter. Previously unpublished works by Beckett and lonesco, collected editions of plays by Artaud, Weiss and Arrabal. The Continental and English theatre predominating with brief forays into the USA. Not only theatre but critical essays, prose works and poems. Their theatre review magazine Gambit edited by John Calder says much for their Europeanization policy. Issue 32 contains prime examples of entente cordiale. Three Theatre Manifestos by the Londoner, Steven Berkoff. Berkoff's adaptation for the stage of Kafka's Metamorphosis. The Autumn Festival in Paris by Pierre Chabert. A report on the 1977 Venice Biennale. The magazine's appeal, for us at any rate, will obviously be limited. Only when these distant events collide with the moment do we sit up and take notice. Steven Berkoff for example.

Earlier this year I had the privilege of watching Berkoff's company at work in Sydney. It was powerful theatre.:. uneven but absorbing in impact. If I had wanted to know more about this man and his work I might have been able to read about him in Plays & Players; I could expect to read about him in Gambit. The student and the professional will already be familiar with both Gambit and the collected plays published by John Calder. They may not be so readily familiar with the Signature label - 'a new series of shorter works, distinguished by the highly personal and imaginative approach of the author to his subject.' 'It comprises works of poetry and prose, fiction and nonfiction, and includes English, American and translated texts.' One recent book from this series I would strongly recommend to all practitioners of the craft of theatre with the proviso that they in themselves be stable and mature personalities. The title of the text is The Theatre and its Double and in its day it has possibly destroyed, changed or illuminated more actors and directors than any other collection of essays. It was written and compiled in the early 1930's by the French playwright and poet, Antonin Artaud. Its children were spawned by the Fringe Revolution of the 1960's. A book certainly worth having.