The Bedford Introduction to Drama

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Anthology For Theatre Students
Review: The Bedford Drama book and The third edition are wonderful additions to classroom settings in teaching theatre. Covering all major genre and many of the "important" dramitist, anyone can find a play in this book to teach or enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: Not quite good enough
Review: The Bedford Introduction To Drama, in its Fourth edition, has a number of virtues. Much of the selection is good, the illustrations are good and often helpful, and the introductions to each period and to individual plays are often very good. Of course, some of them are predictable: it would be nice to see some exciting Strindberg for a change; Miss Julie is really getting weary. However, it is when when we reach the second half of the Twentieth century that the quality breaks down. We find the same tired list of plays chosen for their political correctness: something on race, something for feminists, etc, etc, with very litte convincing attention paid to what has actually happened in the theatre, viewed either from the point of view of box officee appeal (which was a good enough criterion for Shakespeare), or what is likely to be historically influential. A major exception is Mamet's OLEANNA, guaranteed to stir disagreement and excitement in the classroom as it does in the theatre. Each reader will find other exceptions, but the predictability and tedium of the modern selection is disappointing. This text is widely used in classrooms, incuding my own, because there is no satisfactory alternative, but as a text for modern theatre it's a failure, and it's VERY expensive for a student's budget.