Changing Stages: A View of British Theatre in the 20th Century - Hardcover

Written to accompany the BBC television series of the same name, Changing Stages: A View of British Theatre in the Twentieth Century is a deeply personal view of the development of 20th-century British theatre from two of its most prolific and successful directors. Sir Richard Eyre was the Artistic Director of the National Theatre, while playwright Nicholas Wright acted as Associate Director as well as writing his own study of playwrighting, 99 Plays. The result is "a partial, personal, unscholarly view of the century's theatre written from the perspective of practitioners", based on the belief that theatre "is a figurative art, one which cannot excite or thrill or even entertain for more than a minute or two unless it's about people". What follows is a highly original survey of modern British theatre, beginning with Shakespeare, "the DNA of British theatre", and moving through the pervasive influence of Irish playwrights (Congreve, Shaw, Wilde and Yeats), the significance of the American influences from O'Neill to Rodgers and Hammerstein, the impact of Brecht, the breakthrough of Look Back in Anger in 1956, and concluding chapters on the current state of the theatre.

There are some effective and original ideas that weave their way through the book--the divergent traditions of Brecht and Beckett, the importance of America and the significance of gay culture within the theatre--but Changing Stages has a tendency to sink into descriptive retelling of key moments in theatre history, which is full of information but rather light on significance. Nevertheless, overall Changing Stages is a passionate and informative overview of 20th-century British theatre. --Jerry Brotton

Changing Stages, like modern British theatre, has been drawn from a variety of sources- people and movements from Ireland, America, Russia, France, a multitude of actors, directors and writers including Wilde, Synge, O Casey, Shaw, Stanislavsky, Artaud, Brecht, Beckett, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Arthur Miller, Noel Coward, Terence Rattigan, Peter Brook, Joan Littlewood, John Osborne, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Caryl Churchill and Robert Lepage.