Initially, The Art of Theater seems oddly familiar, arguing that ‘Theatrical performance is an independent form of art’ (p. 16). Indeed, in its first chapter, ‘The Emergence of the Art of Theater’, we are firmly located within the development of the avant-garde in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, from Meyerhold and Stanislavski through to Brecht, Artaud and Grotowski, before a brief detour into the emergence of performance studies and what are termed ‘The Decisive Years’ from 1961 to 1985. Whilst this history has been variously rewritten over the last half-century, the seemingly obvious statement about the independence of theatre has rarely been so thoroughly articulated. Despite being a difficult book, this refreshingly rigorous and systematically argued work of analytical philosophy also provides many examples and illustrates its arguments with studies of various hypothetical performances of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler; also, a glossary of core terms that reappear throughout the argument guides the reader carefully. Hamilton's clarity of style and focused argument make his study an engaging change from the predominance of continental thought in many texts on contemporary theatre and performance.

It is structured in three parts which deal with the general overview and methods of the work (Part I) and the mechanisms by which a spectator is able to reach a basic understanding of the independence of theatre performance (Part II), finally addressing the spectator's deeper understanding, based on what the performers do and what makes a performance different from other artistic events (Part III). The important move here is to firmly locate the deeper knowledge of the performance in an understanding of performance practice not necessarily predicated on knowledge of histories of performance. An interesting conundrum appears late in the book with the possibility of a performance being misunderstood as being derived from the company's decisions, but instead the ‘success’ of the performance appears because of a conjunction of existing social factors and conventions, thus revealing the ‘deeper knowledge’ of the performance to be false. Hamilton investigates this eventuality in the case of the amusingly titled ‘Culturally Lethargic Company’ (pp. 182–95), demonstrating precisely why such application of philosophical procedure can be so rewarding for identifying the event of works of theatre, so often taken for granted. The Art of Theater returns us to basic questions where they seem most certain: like any good work of philosophy, it shows how the apparently obvious came to be the case.