“Odd enough was the Russian structure in gray and red, the exterior of which reminded one of a grain elevator. Its dual symbolism attained expression in the form of hard blocks, representing the peasants and workmen of the thirty Soviet republics” (W. H. Scheifley and A. E. du Gord, “Paris Exposition of Decorative Arts,” Current History [December 1, 1925]: 357). In a nine page review of the 1925 Paris Exposition international des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes, these are the only lines the authors dedicated to the Soviet contribution to the fair. Many articles at the time of the exposition's opening lauded France and her history of art and design, yet as Irena Makaryk demonstrates in her book April in Paris, it was the Soviet Pavilion and the country's displays throughout the exposition that offered the most noteworthy break with the past, and thus most fully embodied the exposition's spirit, which was meant to promote the most modern and innovative proposals in architecture, design and theater.

In the introduction to her book, Makaryk distinguishes the 1925 exposition by outlining its status as the first fair to fully embrace the importance of the “new” and the centrality of the arts to embody modernity. Along with these first two features, she reminds her readers that it was at this fair when the USSR was first given the “special opportunity” to show itself on the world stage. Finally, in what will become the main feature of her book, she details the importance of the expo in marking a “revolution not only in the use of theater space but also the whole conception of space” (4). By focusing on theater, Makaryk shifts her readers’ attention away from the dominance of France at the fair (L'esprit nouveu, Le Corbusier, and art déco) to the significance of the USSR's pavilion and displays to the history of modern theater. Makaryk meticulously reconstructs the history, design, and context of every Soviet contribution, not just its Pavilion, which, as she explains “was not the only or first object exhibited to offer insight into the new Soviet state; this achievement was to fall to the Soviet theater arts exhibition” (25).

Organizing her study through a series of questions that bring to the fore the role of modern theater design in charting new forms of space, creativity, and audience, Makaryk also tracks for readers the cultural dynamics of expositions and the role of recalcitrance, primarily on the part of the exposition's planning committee, in dampening the impact the most modern designs and theatrical experiments could have had on the evolution of theater. As she tells it, the exposition was plagued by polemics, debates, internal divisions, and competition between nations. Bureaucracy, more than any other element, served as the strategic tool used by members of the exposition's committee or the French government to keep the “new,” the “modern,” and the “revolutionary” in check. Along with the exposition's own administration, which served as arbiter between tradition and modernity, national and international, Makaryk also introduces the tension that existed between the space of the exposition and the space of the city: “The expo's pavilions modified, interrogated, and sometimes clashed with the space of the city centre, projecting a possible new spatial context and texture” (8). In her attention to the synergies and tensions that existed between the exposition and the rest of Paris, she traces out how, even though the exposition itself tempered the display of the most revolutionary theatrical propositions, the attention brought to theater at the fair reverberated in the city.

April in Paris is organized into seven chapters, which move from a more general, contextual study of Paris and the exposition to specific aspects of the exposition's promotion of theater and the Soviet contributions. In the last two chapters, Makaryk gauges the impact of the 1925 exposition by first studying the transfer of many of the expo's displays to the International Theater Exposition held in New York in 1926 and then by arguing for the centrality of the 1925 exposition on the history of theater: “it both influenced the appearance of future international exhibitions and had an immediate effect on design around the world. It was also directly responsible for an expanding, broad interest in everything related to theater arts” and “accelerated the debate about the role and function of theater in postwar and post-revolutionary societies” (27). Makaryk's book is an important contribution to theater studies, eastern European studies, modernist studies, and the study of theatrical and urban space between the wars.