Clearly written and meticulously researched, Staging Buenos Aires is an interdisciplinary study which blends theater studies, urban history, and literary criticism to argue that the theater played a primary role in developing Argentine democracy during a crucial period in the nation’s history. With its post-independence civil war concluded and with the establishment of its national borders and an economy based on the agro-export model, it was during the period studied by Kristen L. McCleary that Argentina was consolidated as a nation. Moreover, it was during this same period that Argentines sought to redefine their national identity as masses of European immigrants arrived to the young nation and its capital, Buenos Aires, expanded and modernized. It is this quest for identity that occupies McCleary over the course of her book, and she paints a vibrant picture of the theater as a vital space for the development of a dynamic and expansive Habermasian public sphere, precisely because it appealed to both popular and elite audiences and, potentially, even played an important role establishing the Argentine middle-class.

To build her argument, McCleary draws on an impressive range of sources (including ticket receipts, legislation, reviews, and dramatic texts) to provide a detailed depiction of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Argentine theater as both a physical space, where different social classes came into contact, and as a dramaturgical space, where playwrights and audiences could examine, question, and challenge the political and social structures of the time. The scope of this far-reaching study is equally impressive. Individual chapters provide a brief history of the theater in Buenos Aires from the colonial era to the 1920s, focusing particularly on prominent censorship cases; an analysis of the Spanish zarzuela, which retained mass popularity in post-independence Argentine theaters; a reflection on urban planning and modernization through the lens of fire safety (examining the writings of José María Calaza, Buenos Aires fire chief from 1881 to 1913); a close examination of the ways in which politics, social class, and gender were represented and replicated in the theater space; a provocative argument that the securing of intellectual property rights “encouraged playwrights to identify as middle-class and to respond to the interests and tastes of an aspirational middle-class audience by creating plays that resonated with them” (142), some ten years earlier than scholars have previously suggested the middle-class first emerged in Argentina; and two chapters analyzing the plays produced by these new middle-class authors, concentrating on representations of Paris, black and provincial Argentines, and the most popular plays produced in 1919, respectively. A short conclusion reflects briefly on more contemporary theatrical production and makes a persuasive case for incorporating theater studies into broader social histories.

While the ambition of the book is to be lauded, the diversity of the subject matter explored means that the individual chapters can at times seem disconnected. Some unusual structural choices also somewhat obscure key arguments, and there are some notable omissions. To provide one example: in a sub-chapter focused on politics, McCleary mentions in passing the bomb that exploded in 1910 in the elite Buenos Aires opera house, the Teatro Colón, but she only explains the political significance of this event—the passing of the Ley de Defensa Social, which banned anarchist meetings and allowed for the expulsion of anarchists from the country—in the subsequent chapter, ostensibly focused on the emergence of the Argentine middle-class. Similarly, it was surprising that there was no mention at all of the 1871 yellow fever outbreak, which killed some eight percent of the city’s population, had significant effects on the Afro-Argentine population, and led porteño elites to abandon southern and central areas of the city and move north. All of this would seem pertinent to McCleary’s analysis of the urban and social history of Buenos Aires.

It must be said, however, that these are minor issues, and the book constitutes an invaluable contribution to the social history of Buenos Aires. It will appeal to a broad range of students and scholars interested in theater studies (including performance history, dramaturgy, and the theater space), urban history, and the histories of class, race, immigration, and gender in Argentina. It also fits well with University of Pittsburgh Press’s recent Latin American publications, providing an interesting counterpoint to both Camila Gatica Mizala’s Modernity at the Movies: Cinema-Going in Buenos Aires and Santiago 1915–1945 and Eleni Kafala’s Buenos Aires Across the Arts: Five and One Theses on Modernity, 1921–1939.