Performing Bodies in Pain does what many of us were taught never to do: it places contemporary examples of theatre and performance art alongside analogous works from a totally alien historical period and seeks fruitful, politically charged comparisons. Carlson's project is to uncover the cultural work accomplished by the spectacle of suffering then (the medieval period in France) and now (contemporary America, centred on New York City in the period immediately before and after 9/11), and to ask ‘not only why but also why now and why then’ (p. 2). Over the course of five chapters, each focused affectively as much as performatively, she examines Kani, Ntshona and Fugard's The Island; McDonagh's The Pillowman; recent revivals of classic endurance works by Marina Abramović; the body art of Ron Athey; and Kane's Blasted, placing each alongside medieval materials including the legend of St Denis, the martyrdom of St Sebastian, and the martyrdom of St Apollonia. Well aware of the risks of transhistorical studies, Carlson always grounds her readings historically; she also marshals a good deal of recent neuroscience research in order to explore the physiognomic as well as psychosocial relations produced by pain both felt and seen.

The book is thickly researched and Carlson is clearly at home with the medievals, but she is at her best when discussing contemporary works. Her chapters on Abramović and Athey are standouts, tracing the contexts and politics of each artist's works within well-wrought histories of similar body art both premodern and twentieth-century. These are chapters I would readily give graduate students or even senior undergraduates encountering twentieth-century performance for the first time, but they will be of use to seasoned scholars as well. These are also – not coincidentally – the chapters in which Carlson's medieval connections feel least forced; by contrast, the chapters featuring Fugard, McDonagh and Kane accommodate their medieval counterparts rather awkwardly, the latter seeming more a neat comparison than a substantive contributor to an urgent performance history.

Carlson handles her theoretical interlocutors (particularly those from the hard sciences) with deft grace, but this book is ultimately heavier on history than it is on theory – a symptom, I think, of its struggle with its medieval identity. Carlson clearly anticipates an audience not familiar with medieval contexts, offering perhaps more history than is strictly necessary in most chapters, and often this history comes at the expense of argumentation, much of which seems crammed in on the margins and rushed at ends of chapters. While certain comparisons between ‘then’ and ‘now’ do work very well, in general the medieval–postmodern blend falls short of serving both sides. Carlson is an exceptionally supple, passionately political thinker, and I wished more than once for less description and more of her fine critical engagement.