Total Eclipse

by Christopher Hampton

Cover is lightly worn. Small torn patch on back cover. Pageblock tanned, leading into page edges. Pages are clean and unmarked, well bound.

Genres: Plays, Queer, Theatre, Drama

76 pages, Paperback

First published December 12, 1982

About the author

Christopher James Hampton CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, screen writer and film director. He is best known for his play based on the novel Les Liaisons dangereuses and the film version Dangerous Liaisons (1988) and also more recently for writing the nominated screenplay for the film adaptation of Ian McEwan's Atonement.

Hampton became involved in the theatre while studying German and French at Oxford University where OUDS performed his play When Did You Last See My Mother?, about adolescent homosexuality, reflecting his own experiences at Lancing College, the boarding school he had attended. The play was performed at the Royal Court Theatre in London, and that production soon transferred to the Comedy Theatre, resulting in Hampton, in 1966, becoming the youngest writer to have a play performed in the West End in the modern era.

From 1968-70 he worked as the Resident Dramatist at the Royal Court Theatre, and also as the company's literary manager. Hampton won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 1988 for the screen adaptation of his play Dangerous Liaisons. He was nominated again in 2007 for adapting Ian McEwan's novel Atonement. Hampton forthcoming project is the translation into English of Michael Kunze & Sylvester Levay's Austrian musical Rebecca based on Daphne du Maurier's book which is scheduled to premiere in 2009 in Canada, and then move to Broadway in 2010.

Reviews

[Stuart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hampton's philosophical meditation on forbidden love and obsession is a delicate, complex character drama and a compelling romance. As gay theater goes, it's abnormally restrained and profoundly unflinching in its depiction of a marginalized relationship between two famous, prominent men who have chosen to reject the world as deeply as it has rejected them. Two really excellent roles for the right actors, it should get produced more often than it is, but the subject matter, which is so universal and yet depicted in a way that only "the right people" will get it, has no doubt led to it being rejected from mainstream theaters while queer theaters probably consider it too dry and its main characters too unsavory.

[Ross Byrne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Total Eclipse, a title that resonates with the imagery of its subject, cult Symbolist icon Arthur Rimbaud, had quite a journey on its path from stage to screen. German auteur Volker Schlondorff (The Tin Drum) was originally slated to direct, with his sights set on River Phoenix and John Malkovich as Rimbaud & Verlaine. Of course, filmmaker Agnieszka Holland took over the reigns, following Phoenix's tragic death, and the film was released in 1995 starring Leonardo DiCaprio and David Thewlis, bringing Hampton's taut, emotive script to celluloid life.
A life notoriously filled with events, conflict and artistic creation as this, was bound to prove fertile ground and it's a noteworthy tribute to a poet who's been a pivotal inspiration or reference point over the years to talents as diverse as Dylan, Picasso, Beckett, Burroughs, Lovecraft, Sinclair and Acker.

[Ella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Look, I’m a little bit obsessed with Rimbaud, okay. And also, with reading plays right now I guess.

[TK · Rating 4 out of 5]

VERLAINE: The truth is always worth putting into words.
RIMBAUD: The truth is too limited to be interesting.

[Bobby Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was halfway through this when I suddenly realized I'd read it before. I think my original review was too harsh. Verlaine and Rimbaud are pretty unlikable, but I don't mind so much anymore.