Savages

by Christopher Hampton

'...a play that delicately, and with cumulative power, transcribes Mr Hampton's sorrow and indignation at the gradual extinction of the Brazilian Indians, and his reluctant but inexorable disillusionment with freedom fighters and liberal champions of good causes. For what the diplomat discovers in his prison cell with his eloquent captor (all these scenes tingle with life and thought) and in flashbacks at home with his wife, his friends and his colleagues, is that people care passionately...only for those good causes they can espouse without loss to themselves...This is the best kind of political play. It hits the audience rather than at some hypothetical third person villain.' - Harold Hobson in the Sunday Times

Genres: Plays

86 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1973

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

[Bobby Sullivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty obvious who the "savages" are in this play.