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Engaging Audiences: A Cognitive Approach to Spectating in the Theatre . By Bruce McConachie. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Pp. vii + 260. £40/$74.95 Hb.

The majority of the book follows a fairly chronological movement, providing expository readings of nearly all of Barker’s works for stage, radio and film since 1988. The range of coverage is a principle strength; the study includes pieces that have been neither produced nor published, thus giving a perspective on the full range of Barker’s dramatic writing (the chronology in the appendices is also particularly helpful). Rabey continuously traces connections between Barker’s works, which are grouped together as variations and developments on a number of complex, difficult themes. While his critics sometimes see his works as repetitive, Rabey makes a strong case for approaching some of his plays as ‘identifiably exploratory bridges towards the full flowering of a theme’ (p. 201). In a significant development from Rabey’s previous work, Ecstasy and Death now includes performance analyses and discussions of Barker’s production work as well, and also refers to Rabey’s own work as director or performer on pieces such as Ursula, The Twelfth Battle of Isonzo, and Gertrude – The Cry. This new focus on the pieces in and as performance helps to shore up the argument that the poetry of Barker’s language is vitally theatrical, and that it is its embodiment and visualization which render it in its full complexity. It also adds to the argument about the ways in which Barker creates ‘self-performative characters’ and activates the ‘theatricality of the space between’ them, and between stage and audience (p. 174). Given the amount of material covered, it is inevitable that some of the analyses fall a little short; the many references and connections drawn between Barker and other writers, thinkers and artists (Francis Bacon, Heiner Müller, Angela Carter, to name just a few) might occasionally seem too quick to be particularly illuminating. Alternatively, they might be seen as generous gestures and invitations for deeper consideration by the reader. Rabey’s book, then, is a welcome addition to the growing body of critical work on one of Britain’s most challenging contemporary playwrights.