Reviewed by:

• The Theatre of Christopher Durang by Miriam M. Chirico
• Amy S. Osatinski

Christopher Durang's works have opened on Broadway, and he's won the Tony Award for Best Play and been nominated for the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical. Additionally, he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Yet, as Miriam Chirico points out, "very little scholarship exists about Durang's theatrical oeuvre, considering the vast amount of plays he's contributed to the American theatre repertory" (214). In The Theatre of Christopher Durang, she begins to remedy this omission by attempting to provide comprehensive coverage of the playwright's work in a single volume.

In the introduction, Chirico weaves together biographical facts and anecdotes with examples from Durang's plays, illustrating instances where his life visibly influenced his work. This setup promises further exploration into the connection between the playwright's life and his plays. This is an exciting prospect, given Durang's background as a queer former Catholic––two identities that notably shape his plays. Following the introduction, however, the book shifts its focus and prioritizes the themes of the plays above their connection to the author's identities, diverting from the initial promise of a deeper exploration into how Durang's personal background influences his work.

The introduction also serves as a primer on the genre of Dark Comedy, offering a framework for understanding Durang's plays through their comedic structure. This exploration proves fruitful and necessary for contextualizing the plays, as most of Durang's work is characterized by its wild humor along with elements of the grotesque, darkness, and offense. Comedic theory is a welcome framework for further exploration when Durang's œuvre is examined collectively, and its consistent inclusion throughout the rest of the text would have strengthened the volume even more.

The body of the text is organized thematically, grouping plays into five categories across five chapters. Chapter 1, "Perverting the Classics," examines Durang's plays that parody classic works of literature and drama. Chirico observes that Durang often deliberately "misreads" his source material, resulting in "an all-out war, a barbaric yawp in the stoic face the classics" (21). Rather than approaching his parodies with reverence or homage, Durang tears them apart and the results are "riotously funny" (21). The chapter analyzes several of Durang's parodies, uncovering his penchant for "joyful bloodletting" of the classic works he targets (22).

Chapters 2, 4, and 5 continue to analyze Durang's works through a thematic lens: chapter 2, "Seeking is Believing," explores religious themes; chapter 4, "Family Dysfunction," explores marriage and family; and chapter 5, "American Anomie," discusses works that are connected to US culture. Each illuminates the ways in which Durang's plays engage in "joyful bloodletting" of cultural institutions in a similar way to how his parodies lampoon literary classics. Chirico observes that the Catholic Church, the US American family, and the media are all put under Durang's comedic microscope. These chapters include detailed discussions of a few of his plays, offering keen observations about the impact of Durang's personal experience on their writing. For example, chapter 4 opens with an excellent and concise discussion of the prevalent propaganda about the US American family in the mid-twentieth century and then briefly connects Durang's experience of growing up in that era to several of his plays.

In chapter 3, the discussion shifts to Durang's numerous one-act plays and includes an exploration of his early 1990s nightclub act, Christopher Durang and Dawne. Notably, this chapter is the most expansive, encompassing all the themes explored throughout the other chapters. Due to the [End Page 403] breadth of content, however, none of the short plays mentioned is studied with depth. The plays in this chapter could have filled an entire volume themselves, underscoring the wide-ranging impact of Durang's contributions to the genre of US American short plays. Like all books in Methuen's Critical Companions series, The Theatre of Christopher Durang also presents two critical perspectives on its subject's work, this time...

 校订者：

• 
  克里斯托弗·杜朗剧院 （Miriam M. Chirico） 导演
•  艾米·奥萨廷斯基

克里斯托弗·杜朗 （Christopher Durang） 的作品已在百老汇上演，他获得了托尼奖最佳戏剧奖和托尼奖最佳音乐剧书籍提名。此外，他还入围了普利策奖决赛。然而，正如米里亚姆·基里科 （Miriam Chirico） 指出的那样，“考虑到杜朗为美国剧目贡献的大量戏剧，关于杜朗的戏剧作品的学术研究很少”（214）。在《克里斯托弗·杜朗的剧院》中，她开始通过尝试在一卷中全面涵盖这位剧作家的作品来弥补这一遗漏。

在序言中，基里科将传记事实和轶事与杜朗戏剧中的例子交织在一起，说明了他的生活明显影响了他的作品的例子。这种设置有望进一步探索剧作家的生活和他的戏剧之间的联系。考虑到 Durang 作为酷儿前天主教徒的背景，这是一个令人兴奋的前景——这两个身份显着地塑造了他的戏剧。然而，在引言之后，这本书转移了重点，将戏剧的主题置于它们与作者身份的联系之上，偏离了最初承诺的更深入探索杜朗的个人背景如何影响他的作品。

该介绍还可以作为黑色喜剧类型的入门书，为通过喜剧结构理解杜朗的戏剧提供了一个框架。事实证明，这种探索对于将戏剧置于语境中是富有成效和必要的，因为 Durang 的大部分作品都以其狂野的幽默以及怪诞、黑暗和冒犯的元素为特征。当对杜朗的小说进行集体研究时，喜剧理论是一个受欢迎的进一步探索框架，它始终如一地包含在文本的其余部分会进一步加强这本书。

正文按主题组织，将戏剧分为五类，分为五章。第 1 章“歪曲经典”研究了杜朗模仿经典文学和戏剧作品的戏剧。基里科观察到，杜朗经常故意“误读”他的原始材料，导致“一场全面的战争，在坚忍不拔的经典面前野蛮地呐喊”（21）。杜朗没有以崇敬或敬意来对待他的模仿，而是将它们撕碎，结果“非常有趣”（21）。本章分析了杜朗的几篇模仿作品，揭示了他对他所针对的经典作品进行“快乐的放血”的嗜好 （22）。

第 2 章、第 4 章和第 5 章继续通过主题镜头分析杜朗的作品：第 2 章“寻求为实”，探讨宗教主题;第 4 章“家庭功能障碍”探讨了婚姻和家庭;第 5 章“美国异名”讨论了与美国文化相关的作品。每篇文章都阐明了杜朗的戏剧对文化机构进行“欢乐的流血”的方式，就像他对文学经典的戏仿一样。基里科观察到，天主教会、美国家庭和媒体都被置于杜朗的喜剧显微镜下。这些章节包括对他的一些戏剧的详细讨论，对杜朗的个人经历对他们写作的影响进行了敏锐的观察。例如，第 4 章以对 20 世纪中叶关于美国家庭的普遍宣传的出色而简洁的讨论开始，然后简要地将杜朗在那个时代的成长经历与他的几部戏剧联系起来。

在第 3 章中，讨论转移到 Durang 的众多独幕剧，包括对他 1990 年代早期夜总会表演 Christopher Durang 和 Dawne 的探索。值得注意的是，这一章是最广泛的，涵盖了其他章节中探讨的所有主题。然而，由于 [End Page 403] 内容的广泛性，提到的短剧都没有经过深入研究。本章中的戏剧本身可以填满一整卷，强调了杜朗对美国短剧体裁的广泛影响。与 Methuen 的 Critical Companions 系列中的所有书籍一样，The Theatre of Christopher Durang 也对其主题的作品提出了两种批判性的观点，这一次......