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SHAKESPEARE RE-DRESSED: CROSS-GENDER CASTING IN CONTEMPORARY PERFORMANCE. Edited by James C. Bulman. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2008; pp. 255. $52.50 cloth.
Inspired scholarship, the unearthed remains of Elizabethan playhouses, and Gwyneth Paltrow in breeches, have not quenched the desire to recreate the experience of Shakespeares theatre. In Shakespeare Re-Dressed, James Bulman offers a collection of essays that take a fresh look at one aspect of the Elizabethan theatre experience: cross-dressing. While the authors discuss early modern conventions, their primary emphasis is on the implications of cross-dressing in contemporary Shakespearean productions. The eleven essays, which explore contemporary cross-gender casting, cover both male and female cross-dressing, US and British productions, unisex and mixed-sex casts, actors processes, and audience reception. The greatest strength of Shakespeare Re-Dressed lies in the points of intersection between the pieces that reveal conflicting and complementary perspectives on its subject.
In the volumes first essay, Jennifer Drouin uses contemporary understandings of cross-dressing to complicate the convention in Shakespeares plays. She attempts to distinguish between cross-dressing, drag, and passing and the slippages between them, both within the fictive worlds of Shakespeares dramas and their reception in production. Although the lines between the three remain blurred despite Drouins attempts to clarify them, the discoveries she makes in the process are revelatory and useful. Roberta Barkers essay Acting Against the Rules engages existing scholarship on the eroticism of the boy actress. She contends that only in a situation in which both actors and audiences risk losing detachment by participating in a theatrical crossdressing...