Ntq Book Reviews

This book is based on a series of case studies of audiences in England, the USA, and Australia, largely using detailed ethnographic and qualitative research. Tulloch is particularly interested in the relationship between spectator positions often constructed in production and social audience readings taking place among actual audiences. ‘Liveness’ and recent conceptual research around the theatrical event also inform his approach, which applies a post-structuralist focus to the local, while also situating theatre ‘as a globalized industry within risk and postmodernity’ and drawing on current developments in audience analysis within Cultural Studies. To demonstrate his theory in action, Tulloch discusses productions at the Q Theatre in Penrith, New South Wales, under the artistic directorship of Mary-Anne Gifford. He considers the way in which Gifford’s productions of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Much Ado About Nothing, situated within a popular cultural history, impacted on local audiences, including many teenagers. Later, Tulloch turns to the Richard Eyre/ Trevor Griffiths television production of The Cherry Orchard, based on a series of British, Australian, and American student responses. Situating his own analysis within current academic debates on Chekhov, he considers textual representation, social audiences and their reading formations, and the discursive nature of spectator positions in his analysis of the impact of this production. ‘The overall findings might be disappointing to Trevor Griffiths’, he says, noting that few of the students surveyed read the production from the spectator positions that Eyre and Griffiths had tried to design. Tulloch shifts to live Chekhov with discussions of Mary-Anne Gifford’s 1996 production of The Cherry Orchard at the New Theatre and Neil Armfield’s 1997 production of The Seagull at Belvoir Street Theatre, both in Sydney. Drawing on a small-group ethnographic method of audience analysis, the specific local associations of both theatres, and interviews with some of The Seagull’s cast, Tulloch is able to demonstrate that ‘the converging of inner and outer frames at the theatre takes place according to multiple identities’, again demonstrating the discursive nature of spectatorship and the range of perspectives that inform it. Tulloch’s discussion of Chekhov performances continues within the milieu of the Theatre Royal, Bath, based around The Free State (Janet Suzman’s South African version of The Cherry Orchard); the RSC’s The Seagull; and English Touring Theatre’s The Cherry Orchard. Here Tulloch discovers a multiple horizon of expectations among the playgoers who answer his questionnaires, respond in interview, or form focus groups. As with the Australian Chekhov, so in Bath, the theatrical event, its cultural significance and context, and strategies for the analysis of audience reception combine to memorialize unique theatrical moments and experiences. The importance of pleasure in performance, ‘liveness’, and risk in relation to the theatrical event all emerge from Tulloch’s study. He demonstrates a variegated approach to audience analysis while also bringing to life a number of productions of Chekhov and Shakespeare at diverse venues. Sadly, after years of struggling for adequate funding, Mary-Anne Gifford has left the Penrith Theatre, but Tulloch’s recognition of her under-appreciated work is a fitting tribute to the sort of theatrical activity that so often remains hidden from history. This is one of many achievements in a book that so effectively combines innovative theoretical thinking around the theatrical event with an ability to record the complex reception of the event itself. jim davis