In Tuesday's Times, theatre critic Brian Logan reminded his readers that David Hare has been known to phone critics up before breakfast to take issue with bad reviews. If this is the case, Hare's phone will be pretty hot today, with reviewers from both sides of the Atlantic (apart from the New York Post, and our own Michael Billington, who also blogs on the subject here) generally expressing disappointment with his new play The Vertical Hour. The play opened at the Music Box in New York last night with Julianne Moore and Bill Nighy in lead roles.
In the Independent, Paul Taylor remembers that Hare once took out an advert to upbraid Frank Rich, the hugely powerful critic of the New York Times, in "an exercise akin to inviting God to step outside and settle a dispute on the pavement." Though Rich is long gone, the New York Times doesn't seem much better disposed to Hare's new play, his second in a row to take Iraq as its major theme. The paper's critic Ben Brantley describes it as "a soggy disappointment... for all its obvious topicality, much of The Vertical Hour feels like a musty throwback to the psychological puzzle plays of the 1950s."
A couple of critics compare Hare to George Bernard Shaw, the New York Post positively (Clive Barnes praises "the tempered balance of its political arguments"); the Times' Logan highly negatively (he says Hare is "able to argue so eloquently for both sides that his plays take no position whatsoever"). David Rooney in Variety praises the "clever dialogue" but argues that the play is "as messy and unresolved as the conflict behind its central debate."
David Finkle on the Theatermania website also takes issue with the play's structure, with the obvious (if amusing) gag that "Hare's first act could just as well be called The Horizontal Hour. It's about that long and that flat."
Julianne Moore, whose belated Broadway debut this is, didn't impress many critics either. Both the Independent and Theatermania agree that Moore seems more like a student than the high-powered academic she's supposed to be. Eric Grode of the NY Sun adds that while Moore "listens well" (an observation also made by Michael Billington), "a lengthy drunk scene is unconvincing", and Elysa Gardner in USA Today argues that "the problem with this production is that that actors cast as Nadia and Oliver are not equals."
Bill Nighy, who plays Oliver, has far more to celebrate - his reviews are (with the exception of the Independent) unequivocally good. The New York Post is rapturous about both the play and Nighy, concluding "He is, of course, wonderful. Then again, anyone who's seen him in film or onstage in London expects nothing less". Variety admires Nighy's physique: "rock star thin and with eyebrows possibly arched since birth", while Theatremania rhapsodises "Hoo-boy, is he strange - and kind of wonderful!"
As for Hare, he seems unlikely to act on Variety's helpful suggestion that his play is "probably a few drafts away from being a satisfying work". However, the Independent's Taylor concludes by saying that "it may be one of those works that will mean more 10 years from now". Perhaps he's just delaying that phone call.
