| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Matthew Isaac Cohen. The Komedie Stamboel: Popular Theater in Colonial Indonesia, 1891–1903. (Ohio University Research in International Studies, Southeast Asia Series, number 112.) Athens: Ohio University Press. 2006. Pp. xviii, 473. $30.00.

Although I am, like many anthropologists, generally wary of universalizing statements, there is one generalization I can support pretty much without reservation: theater people are something else. Mercurial fortunes, with wild popularity turning to ignominious obscurity and riches to penury at astonishing speed (and then maybe the reverse), great romances and terrible crimes, the latter often stemming from the former, all of the stuff of high drama, or melodrama, play on the stage and play in real life. As far as I can tell, it's all true. Matthew Isaac Cohen's engaging chronicle of one Indies theater star/entrepreneur/director/writer's professional career does nothing to undermine my conviction that this is one stereotype that will outlast all scholarly quibbles. Thank goodness! It makes it so much fun to read about the things theater people get up to.

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