Gobert offers a refreshing exploration of how the rehearsal process and actual productions help shape viewers' perceptions of the authors work. Students and scholars of todays theatrical landscape will find much to admire in this volume, not the least of which is the research methodology, the contextual analysis, and the timeliness of the subject matter A real plus is the examination and analysis of the production history of many of Churchill's works. Top Girls, Serious Money, Cloud Nine, Fen, and Blue Heart receive treatment generally not available elsewhere Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. -- M. D. Whitlatch, Buena Vista University * CHOICE *
Caryl Churchills body of work is prodigious. From 1958 to 2015, she has written nearly fifty plays for the stage, radio, and television, not including her unpublished or unproduced scripts. Despite her popularity, its unlikely many people know the entirety of her work, and even those who do will know it better and more deeply by reading Goberts excellent study. Ambitious and accessible, the book will be valuable for any course on Churchill, or for anyone interested in the playwrights work. While several books on Churchill already exist, Goberts innovative approach makes this one a welcome addition. Taking its cue from Churchills own experimentalism, its form is deliberately varied and eschews chronology. ... The analysis is consistently cogent and original. Even plays that have been written about many times overe.g., Top Girls, Cloud Nineare given new and compelling readings here. ... Approaching Churchills career through Goberts five overlapping points of entry is like crisscrossing a landscape: what emerges is a necessarily incomplete but illuminating, complex, and expansive picture of the terrain. The occasional re-treading, or the recurrence of several plays, productions, and critical figures in Churchills working history, only enlarges our understanding of them. ... Happily, Goberts enthusiasm for Churchills work is matched by the rigor of the analyses, making this book both a great pleasure and a boon for theatre scholars. -- Tamsen Wolff * PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art *
It is no small task to condense the lifes work of one of Britains most celebrated and prolific living playwrights into a single volume. In line with the aims and scope of Bloomsburys Critical Companions series, R. Darren Goberts The Theatre of Caryl Churchill seamlessly interweaves text and performance analysis with extensive archival research, offering an exhaustive survey of Churchills oeuvre and refreshing critical perspectives that expand on her artistic legacy. Despite his meticulous penchant for detail and in-depth scrutiny of various texts and historical records, Goberts prose remains accessible, vivid, stylish, ripe with humor and wit in ways that enhance his advocacy of Churchills work. In short, this accessible book is essential reading for students and scholars or Churchill alike. * Theatre Journal *
In The Theatre of Caryl Churchill, R. Darren Gobert strings together connections between Churchills works, enabling readerswhether Churchill novices or authoritiesto understand the playwrights corpus as a whole and as a product of Churchills politics. Until now, critical treatment of Churchills work has been cursory and focused almost exclusively on her most well-known pieces, such as Top Girls and Cloud Nine. Gobert, a specialist in comparative drama, provides a much more expansive analysis, exploring three of Churchills plays in each chapter while also drawing from a range of pieces, highlighting how they are integral to her body of work and, more important, to theatre Goberts book provides a useful and dynamic account of Churchill as a playwright, feminist, and political crusader. Her body of work is given its due, as each chapter does justice to her playsboth the renowned and the unpublished. * Theatre Survey *
