Anton Lesser and Indira Varma in David Hare's newest play The Vertical Hour.
Rating: ***/5
Monday, 21 January 2008.
When eminent British playwright David Hare's latest play, The Vertical Hour, opened on Broadway last season, it was an event: the first time he'd premiered a play in the United States before a London production. And certainly there was a reason for this choice; Hare's play is all about the interplay between Americans and the British, as much as his last play before this one, Stuff Happens.
Nadia Blye (Indira Varma) is a former war correspondent, having spent time in Bosnia, Iraq, Israel, Palestine -- all of the hot spots of the Middle East. On holiday with her fiance Phillip (Tom Riley) in rural England to meet his father Oliver (Anton Lesser), a general practitioner escaping a murky past, Nadia's relationship is tested by ghosts from their pasts and her fiance's. The vertical hour of the play -- literally the time immediately following a crisis during which redemption is actually possible -- refers metaphorically to a night that Nadia and Oliver spend together late in the wee hours of the night, philosophizing and discussing their pasts together.
When I saw the play on Broadway, I respected the text immensely despite the less than adept performance of the production's Nadia Blye, Julianne Moore. Indira Varma proves a much more emotionally adept Nadia, packing the charm of Julia Roberts and the looks of Idina Menzel, but still I couldn't help but notice flaws in the writing I hadn't quite caught onto before. Hare's use of direct audience address periodically through the piece, for one, seems unnecessary in so long a play with so much time to place exposition within other scenes, and scenes involving Nadia's discourse with students seem heavy-handed in contrast to the more sensitive central scenes.
Another problem of the production, at least in comparison to its Broadway counterpart, is the performance of Anton Lesser as Oliver. While Bill Nighy played the roll as a jittery, imposing figure, Lesser is a much humbler, less physically daunting man, and I had a harder time believing him as a ladies' man as he's described in the text. Where Nighy oozes with lasciviousness, free love, and the concealment of secrets, Lesser seems much more a pent-up poetry-lover at heart.
The design of the production now on view at the Royal Court Theatre, by Mike Britton, is noticeably sparser than that on Broadway, where more literal sets were by Scott Pask, costumes were by Ann Roth, and lighting was by Brian MacDevitt. This production, directed by Jeremy Herrin, strips the play to its bare essentials. Its longest and most adept scenes, those set in the English countryside, feature hazy neon lighting on a sparse set that merely suggests the outdoors, a framed screen obscuring limbs of trees that hover overhead. Tables and chairs are enough to suggest most of the proceedings. Though I appreciated the more sumptuous design of the Broadway production, I'm not sure that the minimal approach isn't an improvement, leaving Hare's words to do the work in a production that, in the end, is so much about the text.
The play is one long sparring match after another, between Nadia and her students, between Nadia and her fiance, between Nadia and Oliver. If one isn't prepared for polemics and plenty of politics, this is not the play to choose for a night out. Going in with an open mind, however, there are plenty of interesting debates that arise to challenge an audience, no matter its political allegiances, in this fascinating play. Most importantly, is it betrayal to a cause to engage in discourse with the enemy in order to affect change or is it betrayal not to, a dilemma Nadia faces head-on when recounting to Oliver her visit to President Bush as a political advisor on the Middle East.
There's no accounting for who will enjoy this production. It's not the best play ever written, and it certainly won't go down in history as such, but Varma's performance and Hare's interesting political dialogue make for what is at the very least an engaging night of theatre.
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