Yasmina Reza: Plays 1 Art, Life x 3, The Unexpected Man, Conversations After a Burial

by Reza, Yasmina; Hampton, Christopher

• ISBN13: 9780571221912
• ISBN10: 0571221912
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-07-30
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Summary

Yasmina Reza's award-winning comedy Art is collected here with three more of her sharp witty and sexy plays, all translated with elegance and eacute;lan by Christopher Hampton. Art Serge has bought a modern painting for a huge sum of money. Mark hates it and cannot believe that a friend of his could possibly want such a work. Yvan attempts, unsuccessfully, to placate both sides. The question is, are you who you think you are or are you who your friends think you are? If your friendship is based on tacit mutual agreement, what happens when one person does something completely different? Life x 3 Henri and Sonia are putting their son to bed when an unexpected knock at the door throws them into disarray. Hubert and Ines have arrived for dinner, a day earlier than expected. As the evening degenerates, Yasmina Reza blends cruel observations with high comedy in an hilarious and poignant examinatioin of our most personal intimacies and private longings. The Unexpected Man A train compartment. A man and a woman. In a series of dazzling internal monologues, the man, a novelist, muses on his latest work, contemplates the futility of writing and considers his life in terms of his daughter, her lover and the workings of Ex-Lax on his digestive system. The woman thinks of her life, her loves and friendships in the full knowledge that the man she is facing is the novelist she admires and would love to speak to, and whose latest work she has tucked in her handbag. Conversations After a Burial Simon Weinberg is dead. On a November morning, six people gather at his funeral - siblings, lovers and in-laws. Mourning allows them special privilege and, for a few hours, they are isolated in another world under a lingering sun, in the shadow of the deceased. Conversations After a Burial examines the intense pause between loss and life; between absence and the return to everyday existence.

Author Biography

Yasmina Reza is an acclaimed playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. She lives in Paris.

Table of Contents

Praise for the plays of Yasmina Reza:

"Hilarious, sneakily profound . . . Art takes that yawny old bore, the play of ideas, and jolts it to life." --Newsweek

"Artful . . . [The Unexpected Man] may convince you that there is nothing of greater value in all the world than a brief encounter between strangers on a train." --Nancy Franklin, The New Yorker

"[Life x 3] remains as endearing as it is thoughtful . . . [Reza] characteristically seeks to explore the quirks that can make everyday life both ridiculous and sublime." --Elysa Gardner, USA Today

"The mixture of laughter and tears, of irony and plain speaking, is often Chekhovian . . . Conversations After a Burial leaves a powerful and affecting aftertaste." --Alastair Macaulay, Financial Times (London)