cover image Out on Stage: Lesbian and Gay Theater in the Twentieth Century

Out on Stage: Lesbian and Gay Theater in the Twentieth Century

Alan Sinfield. Yale University Press, $50 (416pp) ISBN 978-0-300-08102-2

The study of theater and homosexuality is vital, asserts Sinfield (The Wilde Century, etc.), because ""theater has been a powerful institution"" in public life and an important ""site for the formation of dissident sexual identities."" Beginning with the career of Oscar Wilde--whose fin-de-si cle plays introduced a startlingly modern and subversive gay sensibility to British theater, and whose trial and subsequent public humiliation functioned as a national morality play--Sinfield works his way through the plays of No l Coward, Somerset Maugham, Tennessee Williams, Tony Kushner and Jane Chambers. In addition, he analyzes overlooked gay themes in such works as Rose Franken's Outrageous Fortune, Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap and Sholem Asch's The God of Vengeance. Sinfield's strongest and most original analyses address the effect of psychoanalysis on the representation of gay themes, how the idea of ""bohemia"" affected gay writers and the impact of Pinter's sparse dialogue on writing about outsider sexuality. Unfortunately, Sinfield, who is a professor of literature at Sussex University, is far more interested in gay male than lesbian theater. He devotes some space to ""representations of lesbianism"" and engages in solid discussions of such lesbian-themed plays as Edouard Bourdet's The Captive and Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour, but his treatment of such openly lesbian writers as Holly Hughes, Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw and their (lesbian-themed) works is perfunctory. His uneven approach mars an otherwise intelligent and provocative effort. (Nov.)