DRAMA
DRAMA
Travesties Tom Stoppard ‘Tom Stoppard’s Travesties is witty, playful and wise. Forty years on, it is starting to look timeless as well.’ Sunday Times
CHRISTOPHER HAMPTON wrote his first play When Did You Last See My Mother? at the age of eighteen. Later plays include The Philanthropist, Savages, Tales from Hollywood, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, White Chameleon, The Talking Cure and Appomattox; and numerous translations. Musicals include Sunset Boulevard and Stephen Ward. TV and film: The History Man, Hotel du Lac, The Honorary Consul, The Good Father, Dangerous Liaisons, Mary Reilly, Total Eclipse, The Quiet American, A Dangerous Method, Carrington, The Secret Agent and Imagining Argentina, the last three of which he also directed. DANIEL KEHLMANN was born in Munich in 1975 and lives in Berlin and New York. His novels and plays have won numerous prizes, including the Candide Prize, the Doderer Prize, the Kleist Prize, the Welt Literature Prize and the Thomas Mann Prize. His novel Measuring the World has been translated into more than forty languages and is one of the greatest successes of post-war German literature. He is currently a fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers of the New York Public Library.
‘It is a champagne cocktail, compounded of a balletic nimbleness of invention, a bewildering intricacy of design which reaches the sublime heights where mathematics merge with poetry, and the audacious juggling of a master conjuror.’ Sunday Telegraph ‘A dazzling pyrotechnical feat that combines Wildean pastiche, political history, artistic debate, spoof reminiscence and song-and-dance in marvellously judicious proportions. The text is a Joycean web of literary allusions; yet it radiates sheer intellectual joie de vivre, as if Stoppard were delightedly communicating the fruits of his own researches.’ Guardian Travesties was first performed by the RSC at the Aldwych Theatre, London, in 1974. This edition includes a new preface by the author and revisions made for a revival at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London, in October 2016.
The Mentor Daniel Kehlmann
My Country A work in progress Carol Ann Duffy and Rufus Norris
Benjamin Rubin is a cantankerous old writer still basking in the glory of long-ago success. Martin Wegner is a rising literary star. When Martin is given the opportunity to develop his play under the mentorship of his idol, two massive egos are set on a collision course.
Britannia calls a meeting. Caledonia, Cymru, East Midlands, North East, Northern Ireland and the South West bring the voices of their regions. The debate is passionate and opinions divided. Can there ever be a United Kingdom? Following the Brexit vote, a team from the National Theatre of Great Britain spoke to people aged 9 to 97, nationwide. These testimonials are interwoven with speeches from party leaders of the time.
Translated by Christopher Hampton
The Mentor premiered at the Ustinov Studio, Theatre Royal, Bath, in April 2017 and transferred to the Vaudeville Theatre, London, later that year. ‘A witty comedy of writerly egos . . . Daniel Kehlmann, a bestselling novelist, poet and screenwriter as well as dramatist, knows whereof he writes. There can be no greater tribute to the painful honesty of his play than that it has attracted the attention of translator extraordinaire, Christopher Hampton, who provides a superbly colloquial English version.’ Sunday Express
20/04/17 PB | 978 0 571 33964 8 | 64pp | £9.99
PB | 978 0 571 33925 9 | 112pp | £9.99 UK and Commonwealth inc. Canada
In the words of people across the UK
My Country opened at the National Theatre, London, in March 2017 before playing at venues around the UK. ‘Carol Ann Duffy brings a major poet’s ear to the music of the text . . . The uncategorisable brilliance of this show . . . therapeutically unkinks your brain and lets you hear at the end a more reverberant and ionised silence. It’s a political intervention; not a retreat into aesthetics. Roll on the next instalment.’ Independent
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16/03/17
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06/04/17 PB | 978 0 571 33974 7 | 64pp | £9.99 World English Language