For more than 15 years Jonathan Kalb has been a singularly perceptive commentator on American and European theatre. These essays and reviews, by the 1991 winner of the George Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, set a new standard for theatre writing today. This collection begins with a brave and piercing appraisal of the state of current theatre criticism, in a section Kalb characteristically calls 'Critical Mess'. He goes on to revisit the work of Samuel Beckett, as performed in well-meaning efforts to bring it to a new, wider (TV) audience; to consider today's political theatre, particularly in the flourishing form of one-person shows; to explore the theatrical landscape of a reunited Germany, where the Berliner Ensemble is no longer a showcase for the East, and finally to cover what's going on back home in New York -- everything from 'The Lion King' and 'Dame Edna' to plays of David Mamet and Arthur Miller (new and old) and to the latest trends in the Broadway musical.

This is the first comprehensive English-language study of the world of Heiner Muller. Widely regarded as Bertolt Brecht's spiritual heir and as one of the most important German playwrights of the 20th century, Muller wrote almost all his plays in direct response to other literary works, posing ever more radical challenges to prevalent notions of originality and appropriation. In his book Jonathan Kalb analyses Muller's basic artist method: taking on the mantle of other writers and inhabiting the 'bodies' of their works like a vampire or a historically subversive virus. His artist-hosts include, among others, Brecht, Shakespeare, Artaud, Beckett, Genet and Wagner. Kalb's intention is to illuminate Muller texts by showing how they relate to the writings of his carefully chosen alter egos.

This book takes a critical look at the work of one of the twentieth-century's most influential playwrights from the viewpoint of those whose job it is to give the work life on the stage. From personal experience of over seventy productions, from interviews with numerous Beckett actors and directors, and in rare conversations with the playwright himself, Kalb addresses such fundamental questions as: is the task of performing Beckett categorically different from that of performing other forms of theatre? Is the audience's role different, and if so, how? The result is a new insight into particular problems of producing Beckett's early and late works, television plays, and prose works adapted for the stage. The book contains numerous performance photographs and an appendix of interviews with actors and directors involved in seminal Beckett productions.