[In the following review, Thompson lauds Johnson's critical guide to Buero Vallejo's El concierto de San Ovidio and his translation of the dramatist's La detonación.]

The most impressive feature of Buero's best plays is the way in which each of them is totally integrated around a powerful dramatic nucleus of character, situation, and visual or aural effect: the Mario/Vicente conflict, the skylight, the train noises, and the ‘pregunta tremenda’ in El tragaluz, for example. David Johnston brings out this clarity and coherence very well in his guide to El concierto de San Ovidio and in the introduction to The Shot. Both plays emerge as complex structures conveying important ideas, as well as cathartic theatrical experiences.

The critical guide to El concierto is itself clear and carefully unified (marred by only one practical oversight: a late addition to the bibliography means that almost all the reference numbers in the text are out of sequence). Johnston develops a very coherent argument, interweaving biographical information, intertextual comparisons, and discussion of historical and philosophical contexts with shrewd analysis of character, structure, and staging.

The first chapter, ‘Historical Drama’, introduces the argument, assessing the impact of El concierto in 1962, outlining the historical perspectives, making comparisons with other texts by Buero and other authors, and summarizing the dramatic strategy. Johnston rightly emphasizes Buero's skilful linking of past and present, private lives and public history, politics and metaphysics, spectators and stage. There is recognition here of the importance of considering issues of performance and reception of the text, although the point about the stage being ‘fully acknowledged as stage’ (p. 24) is not convincingly explained, and the whole question of realism is dealt with rather summarily.

The remaining three chapters develop the argument in detail. In ‘The Denials of the Past’, historical circumstances, political issues, and social structures are discussed as obstacles to human fulfilment, dramatically embodied in Valindin, the Priora, and the group of blind beggars. The brief references to feminist theory are useful, but could have been pursued further (I would argue that Buero's outlook is essentially male-centred: female characters tend to have the function of contributing to the self-realization of male characters).

‘The Historical Hero’ counters the sense of alienation and despair with the positive potential of individual will, focusing on David and Haüy as representatives of heroic subjectivity. Although Johnston convincingly defends Buero from the charge of Nietzschean élitism, it must be acknowledged that Buero's treatment of the pueblo does tend to be slightly paternalistic.

Finally, ‘The Tragic Sense of Life’ gives a concise account of Buero's theory of tragedia esperanzada. Tragedy is presented as a synthesis of the negative dimension (in Chapter 2) and the positive dimension (in Chapter 3), and a search for emotional impact and aesthetic value beyond both of these. Johnston shows how the elements of blindness, music, and historical circumstances are brilliantly combined to form a powerful meditation on history, Spain, and the human condition.

The introduction to The Shot adopts a similar approach, but is briefer, and consequently less convincing without the full working-through of the issues of tragedy, historical consciousness, and inter-relatedness of the personal and the political. Staging (perhaps a more promising topic here than in El concierto) is given scant attention.

The overall tone of the translation itself is well judged. In the guide to El concierto, Johnston describes the language of Buero's history plays as designed to seem ‘familiar, and yet slightly dated, to the audience’, so as to ‘underline both the historical nature and the contemporary relevance of the action’ (pp. 30–31). The language of La detonación is modern, but never obtrusively so, while certain phrases sound slightly stilted or archaic. Johnson's translation succeeds in reflecting this mixture of familiarity and ‘elucidative strangeness’, although not always in the same places: for example, the straightforward ‘Hasta ese lujo se ha permitido, sí señor. Grimaldi, dígale de qué …’ becomes ‘Indeed, you did make so bold. Grimaldi, apprise Señor de Larra of what …’ (pp. 96–97).

The assessment of the success of any translation also depends upon an accumulation of detail: on the balance between adroit solutions and appropriate idioms on the one hand, and inelegant expressions and outright errors on the other. There are examples of all of these in this version, but the overall balance is positive.

The worst cases on the negative side actually create confusion over who is who and what is going on: ‘the romantic hordes who still cling to the old glories’ turns on its head what Mesonero refers to as ‘la hueste romántica, que va acorralando a las viejas glorias’ (pp. 34–35); the syntax of ‘Te hará volver tu pasión’ is inverted, producing ‘It'll give you your passion back’ (pp. 146–47).

On the positive side, there are some instructive examples of the need to pad out in English utterances that are laconic in Spanish: ‘So you've made up your mind to leave us?’ for ‘¿Quieres dejarnos?’ (pp. 22–23). In other places, the original is constructively expanded and clarified: ‘a healthy sense of irony that cuts through the lives we have to live’ is more effective than ‘la ironía saludable, el latigazo a esta sociedad hipócrita’ (pp. 88–89). The sense of some idioms is successfully conveyed by English equivalents, rather than translations: ‘Escribe que no va a meterse en honduras; que no quiere que le rompan la cabeza’ becomes ‘He writes that he's not going to tackle anything too big; that he values his hide’ (pp. 48–49).

All in all, these are valuable additions to two excellent series. Buero Vallejo certainly belongs amongst the Hispanic Classics.