Routledge, 1976, 1980 and re-issued 2014
British Theatre
Primary
Post-War British Theatre
The definitive account of British theatre from 1945 to the mid-1970s, Elsom traces the seismic shifts that reshaped the stage in the post-war decades. The emergence of the angry young men, the rise of the subsidized regional theatre, the battles over censorship and the abolition of the Lord Chamberlain’s powers with the authority of a critic who lived through the period and reviewed it in real time. Post-War British Theatre is still the standard work on the subject nearly fifty years after its first publication.
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The History of the The National Theatre
– Cape, 1978 (co-authored with Nicholas Tomalin) –
A comprehensive history of the National Theatre from its origins to its first years at the South Bank written with the journalist Nicholas Tomalin and drawing on unprecedented access to the institution’s records and principals. It talks of the decades of campaigning that preceded the National’s founding, the rivalries, the visions that shaped it, the controversies that attended its early years under Laurence Olivier and Peter Hall.
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Erotic Theatre
– Secker & Warburg, 1972 –
A study of sexuality and the stage not as scandal or titillation, but as a serious critical enquiry into how theatre has always negotiated the boundaries of the permissible. From ancient drama to the liberations of the 1960s, Elsom examines what erotic theatre reveals about the societies that produce and consume it, and why the stage has repeatedly been the place where those boundaries are tested first.
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Secondary
Theatre Outside London
Macmillan, 1971
A survey of the flourishing regional theatre movement that was transforming British cultural life beyond the capital. At a time when the regions were asserting their identity with new civic theatres and bold programming, Elsom mapped the landscape with characteristic precision and argued for the importance of a genuinely national theatre culture that did not begin and end in London.
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Post-War British Theatre Criticism (Ed.)
Routledge, 1981
An edited anthology of the best British theatre criticism from the post-war decades, collecting the essential reviews and essays that shaped the conversation about what British theatre was, what it was for, and where it was going. A vital resource for students, scholars, and anyone interested in how criticism and theatre-making developed in dialogue across one of the richest periods in the history of the British stage.
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