tue 23/04/2024

David Hare

The White Crow review - gripping depiction of the brilliance of Nureyev

Genius is as genius does, and Rudolf Nureyev made sure nobody was left in any doubt about the scale of either his talents or his ambitions. Based on Julie Kavanagh's biography Rudolf Nureyev: The Life, The White Crow pairs director and actor...

Read more...

The Bay at Nice, Menier Chocolate Factory review - David Hare talkfest takes intermittent wing

David Hare knows a thing or two about sustaining an onstage face-off. Skylight and The Breath of Life consist tantalisingly of little else and so, for the most part, does his 1986 curiosity The Bay at Nice, which I caught back in the day during a...

Read more...

Collateral, series finale, BBC Two - Carey Mulligan hares to the finish

In a revelatory interview for the Royal Court’s playwright’s podcast series, David Hare admits to a thin skin. In his adversarial worldview, to take issue with him is – his word – to denounce him. He’s quite a denouncer himself, of course. In...

Read more...

Collateral, BBC Two review - a lecture or a drama?

It says something about the state of television that sooner or later every actor has to play a cop or a spy. Latest in line is Carey Mulligan, starring as DI Kip Glaspie in David Hare’s new four-parter Collateral.This is, on the face of it, a...

Read more...

Denial

As alternative facts go, few are as grievous as the assertion that the Holocaust didn't happen. That's the claim on which the British historian (I use that word advisedly) David Irving has staked an entire career. Its day in court provides...

Read more...

The Red Barn, National Theatre

At first, I was a bit confused by the play’s title. After all, David Hare gave his 1998 adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde the moniker of The Blue Room, which coincidentally is the same title as Mathieu Amalric’s very recent adaptation of a...

Read more...

A View from Islington North, Arts Theatre

Is there any point to political satire? The great thing about the glory years of this genre in, say, the early 1960s was that the jokes punctured people’s deepest held beliefs in a deferential society, or that, as in say the 1980s, they had a target...

Read more...

The Moderate Soprano, Hampstead Theatre

Remember back when David Hare was left-wing? I’m not sure that he does. Between the affectionate, bittersweet nostalgia of South Downs and now The Moderate Soprano – a stroll through the verdant history of England’s most...

Read more...

Behind the Beautiful Forevers, National Theatre

Behind the Beautiful Forevers, David Hare's adaptation of Katherine Boo's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, works as both play and portent. Viewed on its own terms, the evening grips throughout in its embrace of the multiple contradictions of...

Read more...

The Vertical Hour, Park Theatre

In the context of recent events in Iraq and Syria, the spectre of the ill-fated Iraq War of 2003 looms large once more. What better time for a revival of master-playwright David Hare’s story about conflict and personal relationships? As parliament...

Read more...

Skylight, Wyndham's Theatre

A totemic play from (nearly) 20 years ago surfaces afresh in Stephen Daldry's West End revival of Skylight, the power of David Hare's intimate epic fully intact if somewhat redistributed as is to be expected from the passage of time and a new cast....

Read more...

Turks & Caicos, BBC Two

Some writers let their work do the talking. David Hare is not one of those writers. He does a lot of talking on the side, and sometimes even on the stage: no other playwright walks on as himself and simply tells you what he thinks. His gift of...

Read more...
Subscribe to David Hare