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JOHN BULL. Stage Right: Crisis and Recovery in British Contemporary Mainstream Theatre. New York: St. Martin's Press 1994. Pp. 251. $39.95.
In Stage Right, John Bull is conscious of the departure he has made from New British Political Dramatists (1983) in focusing his attention on what he refers to as the "new mainstream," a tradition of work consciously opposed to that of the politically committed writers he profiled earlier. The historical turning point here is not 1968, but the Conservative Party victory in the General Election in 1979. Bull examines the impact of the new monetarism and the effects of economic retrenchment of British theatre in order to demonstrate how a new window of opportunity opened up for what he terms "the recovery, both of territory and of `health,' of the mainstream" ( 3). Because of the growing reliance of major subsidized theatres on West End transfers to make up shortfalls in funding, Bull argues that this sector began to welcome more commercially viable playwrights - with their small-cast plays and non-controversial themes - and that these writers in turn "sought to redefine the model of serious theatre" (36).
The book is divided into two parts. The first section traces the political and economic factors that resulted in favourable conditions for the recovery of the mainstream after 1979. Bull offers some...