His mind's eye

Methuen, #17.99

When one considers Peter Brook produces theatre that seems to define the word, it should not surprise us that when he writes a memoir it is quite precisely that. Threads of Time is not autobiography, although there are elements of that; nor is it the imparting of the wisdom gleaned during an illustrious career. It is the contents of Brook's mind, his recollection of his cerebral journey, the mental gradations that have led him to the place of some contentment which he now appears to inhabit.

For, although those of us who have spent time with Brook in Glasgow since the Tramway venue was created for his Mahabharata have been struck by the placid gnomic presence of the man, his fiery reputation as the enfant terrible of the English stage preceded him and it was clear the calm assurance of his later years has not been arrived at easily.

That process is what Threads of Time illuminates and, although superficially it might seem swathed in mystical or metaphysical language, it is at heart refreshingly frank. Brook is honest about the people he has encountered, where he sees his opinion as being relevant to his purpose. But, more importantly, he is honest about himself - to the extent that there is no attempt to sell himself to the reader, and his selfishness or misguidedness is faithfully reported, without any sense of this being a warts-and-all self-flaggelating exercise.

This honesty seems to be part of his ''faith'' as a follower of Gurdjieff and his disciples, something he acknowledges the importance of to himself and his actress wife, Natasha Parry, but does not proselytise for. We should be grateful to the big G, since the younger Brook would, I suspect, have been less frank, in deference to the demands of his own ambition. As it is, there is no reason to doubt this fascinating picture of the Royal Opera in the post-War years or the very cynical account of the reality of the revolution that was Paris in May 1968.

That is one of the few dates that Brook bothers with. The chronology of Threads of Time is teased out and sometimes twists back on itself. Brook has gone to no particular effort to date events precisely and the period prior to the mid-1960s is vague, if not confusingly so, in the extreme. At first this seems coy, but the realisation dawns that it is again an accurate reflection of the working of the mind. This would be uncanny - for this is in no sense stream-of consciousness - except that Brook has made a recent speciality of bringing the work of psychiatrists to the stage.

That is but one facet of the richness in these pages in what becomes a most uplifting read, full of telling stories and revealing insights. This worked for me: ''A true change of direction in life only occurs when a long period of friction has created an intensity through which options drop away by themselves.''