ABSTRACT
In A Short Organum for the Theatre, Bertolt Brecht was less than enthusiastic on the subject of programming theatre with a diet of “revived” and “reviving” classics. He wrote: “In establishing the extent to which we can be satisfied by representations from so many different periods [ . . . ] are we not at the same time creating the suspicion that we have failed to discover the special pleasures, the proper entertainment of our own time?” (505). Brecht argues the case in favor of this “proper entertainment,” which, given his espousal of Marxism, could be taken to mean an entertainment appropriate to the current stage of human development, an entertainment that addresses issues that under previous epochs simply had not arisen. “Appropriate,” “proper”—it is not easy in talking about this to escape from the semantic magnetism of the proprietorial with its connotations of ownership not only of property, but coincidentally of judgment and taste. In the field of literature, these attributes are reflected in the sign of the “author” with its cognates—“authority,” “authorize.” Indeed, the concept of a “proper entertainment” can seem somewhat paradoxical in that a strongly developed sense of propriety tends to detract from the seductive appeal characteristic of “entertainment.” In this chapter, it is my intention to reflect on Howard Barker’s play (Uncle) Vanya , to identify how it relates to Chekhov’s “original,” and to assess the extent to which it might offer the possibility of “special pleasures” and (timely) “proper entertainment.”
