Overview
Irony and theatre share intimate kinships, not only regarding dramatic
conflict, dialectic or wittiness, but also scenic structure and the
verbal or situational ironies that typically mark theatrical speech and
action. Yet irony today, in aesthetic, literary and philosophical
contexts especially, is often regarded with skepticism - as ungraspable,
or elusive to the point of confounding. Countering this tendency,
William Storm advocates a wide-angle view of this master trope,
exploring the ironic in major works by playwrights including Chekhov,
Pirandello and Brecht, and in notable relation to well-known
representative characters in drama from Ibsen's Halvard Solness to
Stoppard's Septimus Hodge and Wasserstein's Heidi Holland. To the degree
that irony is existential, its presence in the theatre relates directly
to the circumstances and the expressiveness of the characters on stage.
This study investigates how these key figures enact, embody, represent
and personify the ironic in myriad situations in the modern and
contemporary theatre.