Comparative Drama

Trish Reid's book The Theatre of Anthony Neilson is the first full-length study of the Scottish playwright's work, making it an important moment in Anthony Neilson scholarship. Up until now, Neilson scholars have published single chapters or journal articles that explore one to three of Neilson's plays in the context of contemporary writing (British, Scottish) or an academic angle (e.g., mental health, spectatorship). Reid's thorough book covers all sixteen of Neilson's works from 1991 to 2016, even unpublished manuscripts; and, Reid often shines a scholarly light on a particular moment that illuminates Neilson's characters in fresh ways, proving that his work is ready for this deeper critical study.

Before The Theatre of Anthony Neilson, one of the most thorough examinations of his work came in Aleks Sierz's chapter contextualized as part of the 90s "In-Yer-Face" label. Reid's book is more academic than Sierz's work, and she presents Neilson as a theatre-maker who coaxes his new productions in inventive ways—as writer, director, collaborator. Sierz gives us excellent, detailed descriptions and analyses of early Neilson plays like Penetrator, The Censor, and Normal, but Reid goes deeper into theoretical ideas. With Penetrator, for example, Reid applies Judith Butler and other scholars to more deeply deconstruct the main characters' gender identities—an approach that opens up our understanding of Tadge especially. In the next chapter, Reid applies Peggy Phelan's psychoanalytic ideas to Normal, arguing that the empirical real and the imagined can hold equal weight in the characters' minds and in our reading—questioning what is "normal" by showing the effect the Dusseldorf Ripper (Kurten) has on his young lawyer (Wehner). As the play gets increasingly subjective in the second half, the blur between rational and irrational is important because "Neilson seems at once to disapprove and yet also approve of the notion that the subjective rebel, the individual who privileges inner and outer realities, should be true to his calling, whatever the cost, and perhaps even to suggest that this figure is more like us than not" (53).

Reid also presents Neilson as more theatre-maker than playwright, explaining that, "as the new millennium dawned, critics viewing his work through the prism of in-yer-face began to look forward to a new Neilson piece in the expectation of something reliably controversial and sexually explicit. It was at this point that Neilson changed direction," focusing on "formal experimentation as … choice of subject matter" (5, 7). While David Lane had mentioned Neilson as a theatrical deviser who uses actors as part of his writing process, the exploration is not as detailed and informative as what we find in Reid's book. [End Page 435]

Wisely, Reid never favors one particular theoretical approach over another. Past academic explorations in Neilson scholarship have analyzed his work through such lenses as camp, pornography, the sublime, spectatorship, and madness and psychiatry. Reid builds on that prior scholarship as she divides her book into different strands of analysis that she calls "Dramaturgies …" These show the variety of Neilson's foci in his writing, including his dramaturgies of (1) Love: Relationship Plays; (2) Horror: Staging Nightmares; (3) Imagination: Looking Inside; (4) Generosity: Seasonal Entertainment; and (5) Presence: Staging Liveness. Several times Reid mentions the difficulty in finding through-lines to someone's life work, but these divisions work well, especially in the career of someone like Neilson, who has written on such a wide range of subject matter. Within each individual chapter, Reid explores the plays that fit that given dramaturgy chronologically. Hence chapter 1, "Dramaturgies of Love: Relationship Plays," covers Penetrator (1993), The Censor (1997), and Stitching (2002).

Reid focuses on Neilson's collaborative creative process too: she explains that "rather than arriving on the first day of rehearsals with a finished play, or even a draft, Neilson begins with little more than an idea and a group of actors and designers with whom he then develops the show during the rehearsal period" (2...