SOURCE: Rundell, Richard J. Review of A Radical Stage, by W. G. Sebald. Theatre Journal 43, no. 21 (May 1991): 263-64.

In the following excerpt, Rundell praises Sebald's analysis of contemporary German theatre in A Radical Stage.

Although the word is gradually getting around in the United States that there is a lot of artistically vibrant and intellectually challenging activity these days on the heavily subsidized stages of the German-speaking countries of Europe, even well-informed American theater practitioners are familiar with little more than the names of those currently active German playwrights whose plays are most frequently produced. Very few of their plays have yet been staged in the United States, for reasons I shall explain below.

W. G. Sebald's collection of twelve essays [A Radical Stage] seeks to provide an overview of German-language theater in the past twenty years, with emphasis on the work of such individual playwrights as Botho...