Simon Weinberg is dead. And, on a November morning, six people gather at his funeral - brothers and a sister, 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.From the author of the award-winning play 'Art', Conversations after a Burial explores that ineffable moment of mourning, when the newly deceased is still almost palpable, the moment in which one can maintain the memory of a breath, the intense pause between absence and the return to everyday existence, between loss and life.Christopher Hampton's superb translation of Yasmina Reza's savage but richly comic play uncovers love and its inevitable betrayals.
Author Biography:
Yasmina Reza is a French playwright and novelist, based in Paris, whose works have all been multi-award-winning, critical and popular international successes. Her plays, Conversations After a Burial, The Passage of Winter, Art, The Unexpected Man, Life x 3, A Spanish Play and The God of Carnage have been produced worldwide and translated into thirty-five languages. Novels include Hammerklavier, Une Desolation, Adam Haberberg, Dans la Luge d'Arther Schopenhauer, Nulle Part and L'Aube le Soir ou la Nuit. Film includes Le Pique-Nique de Lulu Kreutz directed by Didier Martiny. Christopher Hampton was born in the Azores in 1946. He wrote his first play, When Did You Last See My Mother?, at the age of eighteen. Since then, his plays have included The Philanthropist, Savages, Tales from Hollywood, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, White Chameleon, The Talking Cure, Appomattox and A German Life. Appomattox was turned into an opera by Philip Glass in 2014. He has translated plays by Ibsen, Molière, von Horváth, Chekhov and Yasmina Reza (including Art and Life x 3). He has translated seven plays by Florian Zeller, including The Father and The Son, both of which he subsequently co-wrote for the screen with Florian Zeller, winning an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Father in 2021. Musicals include Rebecca, Stephen Ward, Sunset Boulevard and The Third Man. His television work includes adaptations of The History Man, Hôtel du Lac and The Singapore Grip. His screenplays include The Honorary Consul, The Good Father, Dangerous Liaisons, Mary Reilly, Total Eclipse, The Quiet American, Atonement, Cheri, A Dangerous Method, Ali & Nino, Carrington, The Secret Agent and Imagining Argentina, the last three of which he also directed.
