The Year of the Hare

On the face of it, who in the British theater world appears more established, and Establishment, than playwright David Hare? Last year, despite his decades of scathingly political writing targeted at the holy trinity of monarchy, government and church, he was knighted. In London, where the theater is woven into the fabric of everyday life as in no other place in the world, Hare is one of the city's most popular and prolific craftsmen. In 1998 four of his works were staged--four new works, that is--and all did well enough to make it to the U.S. And he has self-confident charm by the bucketful: posh accent; a casually elegant wardrobe created by his fashion-designer wife Nicole Farhi; and an erudite conversational manner, splashed with amusing anecdotes about Salman Rushdie and Philip Roth.

And yet, in his own way, Hare, 51, is afraid of getting too comfortable in his own skin. Which might explain why, just as the Nicole Kidman vehicle The Blue Room ends its wildly successful run and Judi Dench is busy rehearsing for the April opening on Broadway of his London hit Amy's View, he has decided to climb out on a new limb. This month the auteur turns actor with a 12-week run performing Via Dolorosa, a monologue about, of all things, the Middle East. "I just find the regular concerns of the theater so boring," Hare says. "I just don't want to see another play about why my mother didn't love me or how my dad died of cancer."

British director Stephen Daldry originally sent Hare to the Middle East to write a conventional play. But Hare returned with a different notion: to incorporate his meetings with dozens of people into a monologue. "All his plays are forms of moral discourse in a way," says Richard Eyre, who has directed most of Hare's work over the past 30 years. "How do you live your life, that's really the question, isn't it?" Via Dolorosa emerges naturally from an earlier play about the Church of England, Racing Demon, and also from a bold 1996 lecture Hare gave at Westminster Abbey called "When Shall We Live?" about the bankruptcy of religious belief. From writing political plays that verge on the lecture, that is, Hare has decided simply to lecture in an actorly manner. "I find the strategies of fiction more and more tiresome," he explains. "I cannot watch Hollywood films, which I know have been written to a three-act structure that's been taught in class at UCLA." Though he has made forays into Hollywood in the past--including the film version of his play Plenty (which is being revived next month in London starring Cate Blanchett)--he is now resolved to experiment only within his chosen genre.

Via Dolorosa was generally well received in London, but New York may be different. In a town where Hillary Clinton's mere mention of a possible Palestinian state can provoke outrage, Hare's sympathy toward the Palestinians and his portrayal of some Israelis as conspiracy theorists who believe that Yitzhak Rabin arranged his own assassination to discredit right-wing Jews may come as something of a shock. Says Daldry: "I would just hope people see the whole argument."

Especially as Hare does not always take kindly to criticism. In 1989, when then New York Times theater critic Frank Rich gave his play The Secret Rapture a bad review, Hare wrote a very public letter blasting the power of the paper. Even now, let's just say he noticed that the Times did not adore The Blue Room.

Nevertheless, he is ready to face those "discerning" New York audiences, he says, despite his acting anxieties. "I had this very Noel Coward idea that I'd drift into the theater at 6 o'clock and then at no expense perform my little piece," he says. "Then I would go off for dinner in fashionable restaurants with groups of friends." He laughs a great honking laugh. "I've not once, ever, been able to go out to dinner with anybody after the show--not even my children."

Those who know him, though, say his venture into acting is just further evidence that Hare has reached a new level in his work. "He's just got better and better," says director Eyre. "The more usual shape of the playwright's career is to have huge sunbursts of energy early on and then to rather simmer away." Hare admits, "I find myself with almost an abundance of subject matter." And he writes every day, no matter what. "It's heresy to say so, but the Beckett path--whereby you start out writing many words and you end up writing few--is, to me, deeply unattractive." Judging by recent events, there's little danger Hare will go down that unhappy road.