Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This attractive book is the first volume to celebrate the impact of contemporary British design for the theater. This alone gives it a value. The carefully selected and detailed presentation of material will assure it a lasting prominence among publications devoted to contemporary stage design for plays, musicals, opera, and ballet. Although primary focus is the more than 250 reproductions, many in excellent color, of sketches, designs, models, and production photographs, the comfortable informative text goes well beyond supporting these illustrations. Essays by leading critics and directors and by designers themselves give, with a sense of immediacy and wit, an overview of the developing importance of the designer in the British theater after WW II, followed by a detailed account of the designer's rise to worldwide recognition in the recent and influential decade. There is also some indication of future direction and aspiration. Of major importance to designers, directors, and theater writers, this book will also be welcomed by theater historians and scholars, by artists, and by anyone interested in contemporary theater. Both public and academic libraries. -R. G. Whaley, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo