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unhampered by civil and moral restraints and grown slack in freedom,
is to this reviewer, at least, close to the mark. Not many can match his
knowledge of American acting and stagecraft, or assess more shrewdly
the abilities of current critics and directors. He belongs to that useful
and disappearing category of public man of letters for whom the
theater is a "vocation" and who encourages his readers to think
seriously on social and political as well as aesthetic matters and
to
point up their inextricable connections.
Is his description of the cultural scene too unmitigatedly bleak,
and is his faith in the redemptive power of the repertory · theater
excessive? Brustein posits an America dotted with nonprofit theatrical
companies, like monasteries in the Dark Ages, which can serve as
centers for experimental drama and train the priests of Thespis. To
describe the kind of holy novice who will fight on "a moral battle–
field, " he proposes "a form of spiritual indoctrination "
to
inspire or
exorcize the stage. But if the forces of commercialism to be overcome
are as powerful as he depicts them, and if the repertory theater can only
be sustained by a discriminating public prepared "to defer instant
gratifications" until the real thing comes along, then one might
question Brustein's scenario. Given America's undistinguished contri–
butions to the theater, its thin dramatic literature, its uncritical
audiences avid for novelty and sensation, and given the costs of
mounting plays and the meager rewards available to all but a few of the
theater's dedicated practitioners, is it any wonder that movies and TV
will in all likelihood continue to lure actors and writers from the sacred
font?
For Brustein, the turncoats who leave the repertory company for
movie or TV jobs are exchanging a birthright for pottage. Most TV
programs, he says, are produced "by the same faceless people" for "the
same characterless mass."
If
he gives any credence to those who see
some merit in the aesthetic claims of television, he says nothing here. Is
it preposterous to suggest, as some are doing, that in spite of the
maddening conventions imposed by commercial dictation (perhaps
because of them), television drama, even now more differentiated than
Brustein would admit, might conceivably be transmuted into a new
and creative form of popular culture?
Even to mention such a possibility is offensive to what Brustein
calls his " incorrigible, incurable" highbrowism. Who, after reading
his arraignment of the culture business, will not share some of his
misgivings? But America is not England, and American conditions and
American social history itself, jeopardize his dream of a flourishing
