Vinaver Plays: 2: High Places; The Neighbours; Portrait of a Woman; The Television Programme

Description

The second collection of plays by one of France's most prominent playwrights High Places: "A drama which, from second to second, maintains the spectator in suspense, and which, by the same stroke, achieves the dimension of pure, great metaphysical theatre." (Le Monde); The Neighbours " bizarre contemporary vaudeville, biting, disturbing, very subtle and wildly funny" (Le Figaro); Portrait of a Woman: "An intriguing challenging piece." (Financial Times); The Television Programme: "The piece is beautifully plotted and written from the heart." (Independent on Sunday) The translators are Gideon Y. Schein (High Places); Paul Antal (The Neighbours); Donald Watson (Portrait of a Woman); David and Hannah Bradby (The Television Programme)

Michel Vinaver was born in 1927. For nearly 30 years he was an executive with Gilette International and this inside experience of the workings of a multinational corporation has provided material for many of his plays. In the 1950s he was labelled a political dramatist, especially after his play The Koreans provoked right-wing demonstrations and was subject to government censorship. In the 1960s he suffered from prolonged writer's block but overcame it with the writing of Overboard (1969). Since then he has written many more plays and is known as the leading 'dramatist of the everyday'. His work has been produced by every leading director from Vitez to Lassalle; he was the first chairman of the Theatre Commission of the Centre National des Lettres, and is generally acknowledged as France's major living dramatist. David Bradby (b. 1942) was one of the great pioneers of theatre studies in Britain. He had a strong interest in French theatre, modernist and postmodernist theatre, the role of the director, and the Theatre of the Absurd, as well as translating several works. He was Professor Emeritus of Drama and Theatre at Royal Holloway and was made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 1997. He died aged 68 in 2011.