Translating, Adapting, Rewriting: Three Facets of Christopher Hampton’s Work as a Playwright

Abstract

Christopher Hampton’s work as a playwright is multi-faceted. He has written ‘realistic’ plays which mirror the nature of our contemporary society, and ‘historical’ plays which ‘use the historical imagination as a means of obtaining perspective on our world’.¹ He is the author of both plays marked by brevity and terseness and extensive plays written for large casts and different settings. Some of his stage plays are modelled on Chekhov and Ibsen, others on Brecht. He has experimented with various techniques, such as the multiviewpoint technique, visual imagery and the structuring of scenes, to name but three. Indeed, Hampton’s work is varied. But it is also different from the plays written by some of the other contemporary English dramatists — different in two ways: Hampton tries to write without being influenced by a political or aesthetic ideology; he wants to portray things as they are. In an interview, which I conducted, the playwright stated the following:

I have always been interested in political issues without being interested in writing prescriptions or somehow answering questions. I am more interested in raising the questions. I think what is confusing for many people who try to assess my work is that it is very hard to find any consistency in it. And that is an unfortunate result of the fact that I am always more interested in doing something different than in anything else.²