Just read an interview with the playwright David Hare in last weekend’s Observer. For my money Hare’s remained one of the most consistently coherent and important dramatic voices of the past 30 years and I’ve been lucky enough to see some excellent productions of his plays, most recently The Permanent Way at the National a few years ago.
His new play, The Vertical Hour, is opening in the US and, as opposed to his verbatim theatre plays that discuss recent events through the voices of the people involved in the public arena, this is one of his personal political plays where world events are discussed and debated by imagined characters in a tighter domestic setting.
The feature also included an extract from the script and one speech contained the sort of ideas that proves Hare’s validity to me.
‘The politicians dismantle communities, then complain that community no longer exists. They incubate the disease, then profess to be shocked when people catch it. “Oh , why can’t people behave?” It’s a good question. But when the people who make the law become lawless themselves, what can you do?’
Couldn’t have said it better myself. But that’s why I’m not David Hare.
Well, yet…
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