Faber & Faber

Tales from Hollywood: Odon Von Horvath

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Synopsis:

With the Austro-Hungarian dramatist Odon Von Horvath as our guide, Christopher Hampton’s witty and erudite play takes us on a tour of the sun-soaked boulevards of 1940s Los Angeles. Taking in such improbable residents as Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Bertolt Brecht and the Marx Brothers amongst others, it brilliantly serves to open up a neglected chapter of American cultural history, as the wry and embittered European émigrés find themselves amidst the materialistic razzle-dazzle of Hollywood.

‘A mammoth creation dealing with the clash of different worlds, the relationship between art and politics, the harsh realities of working in the film industry and the unrivalled possibilities of drama as a vehicle for impassioned debate ... Hampton is a classicist driving towards emotional and individualised truth through an almost faultless grasp of style and structure, irony and great wit ... Tales from Hollywood marks the return of a writer touched with greatness.’ Time Out

‘[It] is a civilized, well-written and researched play about Hollywood’s open embrace of refugee talent and its total inability to know what to with it ... Hampton’s success in the play lies in evoking a bizarre world in which Schoenberg plays tennis with the Marx brothers ... He is a classicist in a generation of romantics.’ Michael Billington, Guardian

Tags:

Categorised as:

Music, Stage & Screen

Sub-categories:

Playscripts

Genres & Themes:

Hollywood; Nazi Germany; WWII