Strategies of Political Theatre: Post-War British Playwrights. By Michael Patterson. Cambridge Studies in Modern Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003; pp. 232. $70 cloth.

In this clear, concise, and accessible volume, Michael Patterson sets himself the task of examining “the work of nine talented and innovative British playwrights who shared a laudable but strange conviction: that by writing plays and having them performed they might help to change the way society is structured” (1). As if conscious of the inevitable charge that by focusing on Wesker, Arden, Griffiths, Barker, Brenton, McGrath, Hare, Bond, and Churchill he is perpetuating the damaging myth that political theatre in postwar Britain centers on these usual suspects, Patterson takes pains to define his terms. Political theatre for the purposes of his volume “implies the possibility of radical change on socialist lines: the removal of injustice and autocracy and their replacement by the fairer distribution of wealth and more democratic systems” (4). But as the Lord Chamberlain found in his increasingly desperate attempts in the 1960s to hold on to his power to censor British drama, the more you attempt to define, the more problematic the issues that arise. Theatre historians are now becoming increasingly aware of the power of “hidden theatre” in the evolution of postwar British theatre—that is, the large number of community-based and politically active groups that have been marginalized by a disproportionate focus on “representative” political playwrights and a few well-scrutinized collective organizations, such as 7:84, Monstrous Regiment, and Belt and Braces, who are all alluded to in this volume. In light of this fact, Patterson's interest in the phenomenon that saw a generation of playwrights flourish between the mid-fifties and the early eighties, who shared a desire to change society, now seems rather quaint. It is all the more to his credit, therefore, that he has produced a highly thought-provoking work.