164 Rezensionen Quellen aus ihrer Wirkungsgeschichte entwickelt er eine genealogische Perspektive auf die Austauschprozesse zwischen dem je individuellen Rollenspiel der Interpreten, den ästhetischen und politischen Motiven der Inszenierungen und den kollektiven Wunschvorstellungen des Publikums. Diesen sehr unterschiedlich angelegten Rollen ist nach Marx jedoch gemeinsam, dass sie das kollektive Imaginäre sichtbar zu machen vermögen. Besonders gelungen ist in dieser Hinsicht die Schilderung der Ausführungspraxis von Schillers zur Nationaldichtung avanciertem “Tell”. Marx’ Studie gelingt es hier, Verbindungen zwischen Text- und Bildelementen zu knüpfen, die allmählich ein Geflecht unterschiedlicher Kräfte und Wirkungen bilden. Nicht immer gelingt es Marx so überzeugend, seine vielfältigen Quellen im Dienst der Argumentation zu entfalten. Dies wird dadurch erschwert, dass er sein profundes theaterhistorisches Wissen allzu detailreich ausbreitet und darüber die Ansprüche seines Analysemodells vernachlässigt. Den engen Rahmen der historischen Aufführungsanalyse verlässt Marx im zweiten Teil seiner Studie, wo er die gleichzeitige Konjunktur des Bauerntheaters und des großstädtischen Unterhaltungstheaters behandelt. Populäre, ja triviale Theaterformen wie die Posse und die Operette interpretiert er als Modelle eines Gemeinschaftserlebnisses, die womöglich “einen wesentlich größeren Anteil an der Bewältigung der (auch traumatischen) Modernisierung” (204) als die Hochkultur hätten. Damit relativiert Marx gleichzeitig die Bedeutung der heroischen Rollenbilder, die er im ersten Teil herausgearbeitet hatte. Leider fällt sein Fazit am Ende der einzelnen Kapitel oftmals sehr allgemein aus, etwa wenn er notorisch die Opposition Stadt - Land, Kultur - Natur heranzieht, ohne deren wechselseitige Dynamiken wirklich zu entfalten. Wenig überzeugend argumentiert die Studie etwa, wenn sie den Erfolg lokaler Bauerntheater der nostalgischen Ausprägung einer “ursprünglichen, ethnischen Identität” (230) und einer Renaissance des Mimus zuschreibt oder diesem Theater die Funktion eines Heilmittels gegen Entfremdung attestiert. Im Sinne von Marx’ eigenem Modell der “Kulturen der Zirkulation” greifen solche Urteile zu kurz. Erst im Kapitel über den großstädtischen Theaterkonsum und die Verbindung von Spektakel, Schaulust und Warenhaus entwickelt dieses Modell in vollem Umfang interpretatorische Plausibilität. Fraglich bleibt letztlich auch die Beschränkung auf das Theater als Modell und Vorbild des “theatralischen Zeitalters”, entwickelt sich doch nicht erst seit der Jahrhundertwende eine Vergnügungsindustrie außerhalb des Theaters - zumal der groteske Körper, auf den Marx immer wieder rekurriert, genauso im Schaustellermilieu und Zirkus verankert ist. In dieser Hinsicht wären sowohl die Ausprägung neuer Formen massenhafter Unterhaltung (wie dem seit 1895 sich etablierenden Film) als auch der Austausch und die Konkurrenz zwischen den etablierten Orten wie dem Theater und den neuen Orten, wie den Vergnügungsparks gerade in Hinsicht auf die Programmatik der “Kulturen der Zirkulation” stärker zu konturieren. Nicht von ungefähr bettet Marx im zweiten Teil seine Studie thematisch die frühen “Sally”-Komödien von Ernst Lubitsch ein, in deren zentraler Figur er den Prototyp einer modernen Aufsteigermentalität und ethnisch geprägten Identität ausmacht, und widmet der Konjunktur des Ausstellungswerts ein eigenes Kapitel. Wien P ETRA L ÖFFLER Bruce D. McClung: Lady in the Dark: Biography of a Musical. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2007, 274 pages. Lady in the Dark: Biography of a Musical by Bruce D. McClung is very promising from the outset. The book offers us a ‘virtual ticket’ to the shortlived history of a prominent American musical in relation to its wider social, cultural and political frameworks. McClung’s exceptionally engaging and confident style of writing succeeds in taking the reader back to the opening night of Lady in the Dark on 23 January 1941. We meet the producer and script-writer Moss Hart, the lyricist Ira Gershwin, the ‘émigré composer’ Kurt Weill, the ensemble Forum Modernes Theater, Bd. 23/ 2 (2008), 164-166. Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Rezensionen 165 with its rising star Danny Kaye and leading ladyin-the-dark Gertrude Lawrence (playing Liza Elliot). The book gives us an opportunity to witness and re-experience the show as if sitting “in the front row”. McClung concurrently brings to life a plethora of historical data, facts and figures about the production, its genesis, its developments on Broadway and on tour, and its later adaptations for radio and television. Throughout the chapters, however, our attention is drawn to offstage political events; readings of Weill’s musical score with an eye on its growing importance for the American musical theatre; references to the social struggles of women in the war effort in contrast to the musical’s theme of a patronizing Freudian psychoanalysis of the 1940s and 50s. In this way, the book aims to give different perspectives on a keystone musical that has sadly been overshadowed by its contemporaries such as Oklahoma! but that shines as new through McClung’s historiographic lens. Despite of the book’s promising aspirations and McClung’s nineteen dedicated years of research guided by copious interviews and historical documents, it occurred to me while reading that this biography has its methodological problems: not so much due to its bulking exhaustiveness but due to its claims of historical accuracy. I appreciate McClung’s keen eye for detail a great deal but he constantly mixes self-acclaimed accurate evidence with fiction in his apparent efforts to give a ‘true’ account. For instance, during lengthy descriptions of what is there to be seen on and behind the stage, McClung often puts footnoted references to concurrent events, audience reactions, the crew’s personal and professional biographies between brackets. This gives the impression that we are receiving inside knowledge by an impartial offscreen voice while we are re-experiencing the actual events. In the intermissions and after the performances we read telegrams, letters, scratch books, and critical newspaper reviews. The book reads therefore easily like a novel or a musical in itself with many subplots, rumours and intrigues between people (such as the ongoing mutual and amusing backstabbing of the actors Kaye and Lawrence). However, McClung’s fictional reconstruction of historical data puts into question its claims at historiographical validity and the historicity of the play’s socio-cultural matrix. Its approach is evidently part of a research context and a tendency to revive historical data through an ‘informed’ style of fictional writing. But the book does never engage with the methodological problems of such an approach: its reification, its use of archival resources and the ways we are affected by this approach. As a result, the book is interdisciplinary without admitting it, and restrictive in the methodology it implies, without really grounding it in the theory of social and cultural history. Its reference list with sources that predominantly matter American musical theatre and American Social History on issues of gender and popular music speaks for this unfortunate limitation. Although McClung initially declares his enduring interest in the work of Kurt Weill, the book culminates in an adoration of Gertrude Lawrence’s persona stemming from a personal encounter with her in New York’s Grand Central station, of which it is unclear if it is a dream or a fictionalized anecdote. McClung comments when he catches a glimpse of her in a newspaper article: “Thrilled by our discovery, we try not to call attention to ourselves but get close enough to observe what is happening” (199). This neutral stance to the historical event does not correspond to the book’s piling up of historical data which has to compensate for its fragmentation by McClung’s highly engaged way of writing. McClung goes on to describe how he tries in vain to catch something of Lawrence’s performance as both a myth and a real woman, which in my view shakes the heart of his implied historiographical efforts for truthfulness and totality. In relation to this rather problematic historiography, McClung does not fully explain in chapter eight the cultural-historical context for why Lady in the Dark has not and cannot be restaged today regardless copyright matters. Part of his explanation is musical theatre’s development, for which Lady in the Dark subtitled as ‘musical play’ served only as “progenitor of the first type of concept musical” (165). McClung is right to address Weill’s intentions to make a difference to ‘American opera’ and music theatre by developing a distinct American musical-dramatic form separating music from drama, in which music would carry the story and address the audience in a representational 166 Rezensionen style (such as Lawrence’s rendition of ‘The Saga of Jenny’ directly to the audience). But McClung does not recognize the legacy of Bertolt Brecht in Weill’s innovations at all. He moreover fails to fully account for how the theme of psychoanalysis makes this so-called ‘conceptual musical’ too tendentious and serious to persist time, neither does he acknowledge the dubious entertaining character of ‘psychoanalysis for the layman’ in this musical. The issue of psychoanalysis and gender is also a sore spot in McClung’s argumentation of the social context. On numerous occasions McClung refers to the feminist objections to the musical’s sexist content, which has focused on Liza’s indecision which man to marry, sexual harassment and in the end of the play, the sacrifice of her career for a relationship. The depiction of the psychoanalyst Dr. Brooks plays a significant role in the social commentary. McClung implies the dramaturgical relevance of ‘adaptation’ when claiming that “judicious cutting of Dr. Brooks’s part is necessary” (197) for the play to be staged today. But the gender issue becomes rather oblique in light of a controversy claiming that the role of Liza can be understood within the playwright’s personal biography. Moss Hart namely struggled with personal and artistic demons for which he regularly visited psychiatrist L.S. Kubie. McClung suggests that Lady in the Dark - in the wake of Sigmund Freud’s death - can be seen as a vehicle for Dr. Kubie’s views on the purpose and legitimization of psychoanalysis in the US. Moreover, McClung presents us with a psycho-analytical reading of the play by Dr. Kubie suggesting that Liza’s indecisiveness can refer to a drive to become both sexes. In this reading Hart’s one-time performance of Liza’s role at a closed dress rehearsal would reveal a confusion concerning his sexual identity. Homosexuality was classified in the 1940s as a mental illness, which Dr. Kubie (sorry to say) claimed to be able to ‘cure’. In this sexually repressive context, McClung’s throw-away remarks give the play much further reaching implications than are discussed so far. His suggestive readings are appealing, though they ask for more historical contextualization and careful explanation. Finally, McClung’s attempts at rather conceptual analyses of both the performance and the musical score are unconvincing. His application of the Brechtian ‘Gestus’ - through a book by Kim H. Kowalke which is in turn based on a translation of Brecht’s notion - to some of the dance sequences in Lady in the Dark is, to say the least, dubious. This makes his subsequent reading of the dream sequences as “metadiegetic” relatively unsubstantiated. In his musicological discussion of symbolic keys and tonalities, ‘musical riddles’ and thumbprints, McClung falls short of analysing their relation to one another for the spectator in the perception of the performance and often mistakes Weill’s assumed intentions for his own narrative readings. Hence, despite McClung’s well-intentioned and highly accessible attempts to join a wide corpus of historical data, socio-cultural contexts, and historical voices on a somewhat forgotten musical in the history of musical theatre, the book lacks one strong argumentative thread and selfreflexivity towards its concepts and methodology, which at times regretfully leaves its reader ‘in the dark’. Amsterdam P IETER V ERSTRAETE Fritz Lang Collection. Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler. Frau im Mond. Spione. Restaurierte Fassungen mit neuer Musik. 6 DVD-Set. München: Transit Film, 2007, ca. 32,00 . Fritz Lang (1890-1976) ist einer jener Protagonisten der Filmgeschichte des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts, die durch Werke, wie den monumentalen Nibelungen-Film (1922-24), Metropolis (1925/ 26) oder M - eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (1931) einen festen Platz im Bildungskanon einnehmen. Allerdings gründet diese Position eher auf einer rückblickenden Perspektive, die diese Filme als Meilensteine der Moderne interpretieren. Am deutlichsten ist dies vielleicht an Metropolis zu erkennen, dessen Bilder heute fast schon Ikonen für die Modernisierungsängste und -fantasien sind, während seine Fabel eher in den Hintergrund getreten ist. Forum Modernes Theater, Bd. 23/ 2 (2008), 166-168. Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen