A Queer Sort of Materialism: Recontextualizing American Theater. By David Savran. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003; pp. 225. $22.95 paper.

Extract

David Savran's recent contribution may seem at first to be simply a collection of articles in survey of his scholarship since 1990, pleasurably, as he writes in his preface, comprising “something of a buffet” (ix). But as this book's subtitle and preface helpfully indicate, there is a coherence to the buffet, in the very diversity of its topics and queer shifts in analytical perspective. Presiding over the eclectic array is Savran's first chapter, entitled “Middlebrow Anxiety,” an impressive introduction to the book's main ambition in “recontextualizing American theatre” via very concrete applications of queer, feminist, and historical materialist theorizing. Indeed, a major value in this collection is the lucid demonstration of Savran's critical success in juxtaposing different contextual frames to explore American theatre of the past fifty years.