As its title suggests, the edited collection Postdramatic Theatre and Form puts contemporary postdramatic performance in dialogue with formalist considerations. Each chapter speaks directly to Hans-Thies Lehmann's seminal Postdramatic Theatre, making it an excellent companion piece for courses studying Lehmann's theory. Moreover, individual chapters may potentially complement courses specifically focused on the artists or alternative presentation styles discussed, as the range of performances examined is extensive. The book will primarily be of interest to researchers, graduate students, and advanced undergraduate students but may also appeal to practitioners interested in contemporary performance methods.

Boyle, Cornish, and Woolf open their book with an overview of the collection's aim: to revisit Lehmann's work with specific focus on investigations of form. The authors identify postdramatic theatre “as a category of performance practice that moves beyond the convention of representing on the stage some pre-given content, such as a story or fable” and suggest that “the postdramatic could thus be said to signal a historical shift in theatre toward form and ‘away from’ drama” (2). In their Introduction, the editors address critiques of Lehmann's theory, notably that it may be restricted to Western theatre and that political and socioeconomic discussions in postdramatic theory are often limited. Although the collection's case studies remain centered in Western performance, many of the chapters astutely draw ties between postdramatic forms and their political or socioeconomic context. In Chapter 4, for example, Jasmine Mahmoud discusses the derelict spaces used by Seattle's Implied Violence, which directly comment on each neighborhood's economic circumstances. And Matt Cornish and Stanton B. Garner Jr. discuss migrant and dementia performance in Chapters 12 and 13, respectively, arguing that subjective aleatory or nonlinear narratives—characteristic to postdramatic performance—reflect well the lived conditions of the communities examined. The political analyses add to discussions from an earlier 2013 book in the same series focused specifically on politics—Postdramatic Theatre and the Political: International Perspectives on Contemporary Performance—to which Woolf (and also Lehmann) contributed. Postdramatic Theatre and Form is thus able to extend Lehmann's original theory further into political and socioeconomic domains. Beyond critiques of Lehmann's theory, the editors also include a useful overview of formalist theory in their Introduction, arguing for a broader scope of formalist inquiry, which is not necessarily disconnected from social or political context. They state: “By attending to the longstanding suspicion around—even allergy to—form within our field, we argue that artists and scholars would benefit from a more capacious formalist vocabulary” (7). The early discussion on form is quite welcome, as formalist theories are less specifically discussed within the collection's chapters than is Lehmann's theory—though much is often implicit in each chapter's analysis, as each focuses on formal elements of performance, particularly alternative staging contexts. Following the editors’ opening, Chapter 2, by Elinor Fuchs, provides helpful historical context linking Lehmann's theory to the work of his mentor, modern drama theorist Péter Szondi.

After the editors’ and Fuch's chapters, Postdramatic Theatre and Form is divided into two parts, “Formal Aspects” and “Social Formations.” The first part focuses on different formal elements in performance, such as the alternative forms a performance text can take, the use of media, or different means for staging time and space, whereas Part 2 focuses on how various social contexts impact form (as with Garner's discussion of dementia performance with the elderly). Through the broad range of performance styles considered in Part 1—from Implied Violence's site-specific work to a thirty-second performance, Time Machine by De Stilje, Want of the Netherlands, discussed by Philip Watkinson in Chapter 5—readers will gain a greater appreciation of the broad range of elements at play in considering postdramatic theatre form, many of which may be taken for granted, such as a performance's location and duration. Part 1 also includes a chapter on Tadeusz Kantor by Magda Romanska (Chapter 6), as well as one by Edith Cassiers, Timmy De Laet, and Luk Van den Dries (Chapter 3) that examines Guy Cassiers's and Romeo Castellucci's notebooks and creative processes, both of which will easily complement courses examining these international artists’ work. Cassiers, De Laet, and Van den Dries aptly note that genetic theatre studies—research examining the genesis of a performance—tends to focus on scripts and text-based material, thus clinging “to characteristics that are foundational of classical drama, forsaking the expanded aesthetics that typify postdrama” (34). The chapter highlights how even a performance's preparatory materials contribute to its form.

Part 2 investigates the impact of different social contexts on performance. In Chapter 8, for example, Andrew Friedman considers the curation of avant-garde performance festivals, in which performers may disrupt or exploit one another's work. In Chapter 9, Ryan Anthony Hatch considers the gallery setting of David Levine's Habit using Lacanian analysis. Kate Bredeson, in Chapter 10, extends Lehmann's theory to the contemporary French scene, which was underrepresented in Postdramatic Theatre, by linking it to Bruno Tackels's concept of “set writing” (148). And, in Chapter 11, Yvonne Hardt considers reperformances from dance archives. The case studies in Part 2 illuminate how postdramatic theatre is not simply shaped by the dramaturgical choices of the artistic team but is also influenced by the broader social context in which it is presented.

As with Lehmann's original book, it is impossible to capture the full range that postdramatic forms may take. However, Postdramatic Theatre and Form offers a strong variety of case-study analyses that will encourage readers to consider more fully the extent to which a multitude of formal elements within a performance's dramaturgy and its social context work to shape the overall meanings of a piece. In focusing specifically on form, the book extends Lehmann's ideas into fruitful theoretical territory, simultaneously adding more recent performances to the discussion. The book consequently can ably serve to supplement and renew studies on postdramatic theatre sixteen years after Lehmann's original publication.