ABSTRACT
This chapter explores contemporary British approaches to the dramatic canon and the anxieties around authorship and authority that continue to haunt classic plays. Over recent decades, there has been a growing trend for British theatre practitioners to reimagine, deconstruct, or intervene in the classics. These ‘radical’ revivals and adaptations have often caused controversy, prompting a backlash from critics who believe that they are ‘unfaithful’ to their source texts. At the same time, many of these theatre-makers have justified their interventions through an appeal to the ‘spirit’ of the original work or its author. The arguments of both critics and practitioners are underpinned by shared belief in a stable, transcendent dramatic ‘work’, the premises of which this chapter interrogates. Drawing on Jacques Derrida's theoretical work on supplementation and iterability, the chapter deconstructs perceived hierarchies of text over performance – and vice versa – by proposing that both playtexts and performances are always supplements for an absent, ideal ‘work’.
