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Life X 3 by Yasmina Reza β€” book cover

Life X 3

by Yasmina Reza, Christopher Hampton
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Overview

From the celebrated writer of Art, a scathingly hilarious commentary on vanity, professional insecurity, and the vicissitudes of marriage.

Life X 3 presents three versions of two couples (and an offstage six-year-old) trying to make a success of one evening despite the fact that they neither like nor respect one another. When Hubert and Inès arrive a day early to dinner at the home of Henri and Sophie, Sophie barely has time to change out of her robe and Inès is in a foul mood about a run in her stocking-from there, the evening can only go downhill. Over an improvised meal of chocolate fingers, potato chips, and wine, the couples trade insults on every social and professional level and loyalties are changed with the same rapidity that glasses of Sancerre are drained. However, as she has so astutely done in the past, Yasmina Reza uses these acidic exchanges to illuminate the innate desire for love and acceptance in us all.

Synopsis

From the celebrated writer of Art, a scathingly hilarious commentary on vanity, professional insecurity, and the vicissitudes of marriage.

Life X 3 presents three versions of two couples (and an offstage six-year-old) trying to make a success of one evening despite the fact that they neither like nor respect one another. When Hubert and Inès arrive a day early to dinner at the home of Henri and Sophie, Sophie barely has time to change out of her robe and Inès is in a foul mood about a run in her stocking-from there, the evening can only go downhill. Over an improvised meal of chocolate fingers, potato chips, and wine, the couples trade insults on every social and professional level and loyalties are changed with the same rapidity that glasses of Sancerre are drained. However, as she has so astutely done in the past, Yasmina Reza uses these acidic exchanges to illuminate the innate desire for love and acceptance in us all.

Observer (London)

Minimally, millennially chic...LIFE X 3 is swift, sharply phrased, poised and awash with uncertainty.

About the Author, Yasmina Reza

Yasmina Reza, born in Paris in 1959, is an acclaimed playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. Her first play, Conversations Après un Enterrement (Conversations After a Burial) won her the 1987 Molière Award for Best Author along with a Johnson Foundation Award and a SACD New Talent Award. Her other works for the theater include Art and The Unexpected Man. She lives in Paris.

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Editorials

NY Times

...elegantly streaked with troubling shadows and shaped with Cartesian symmetry.

Observer (London)

Minimally, millennially chic...LIFE X 3 is swift, sharply phrased, poised and awash with uncertainty.

Sunday Times (London)

[An] extraordinary play...The writing is brisk, brittle, funny and lethally accurate.

The Guardian (London)

Yasmina Reza's new play is an elegant enigma...as an intellectual construct, the play is fascinating.

Book Details

Published
January 1, 2004
Publisher
Dramatists Play Service, Incorporated
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780822219583

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