David Hare (1) (1947–)

"It's a common criticism of my works that I write about women whom I find admirable, but whom the audience dislikes."

That's what Hare writes about this play in the edition I read. I have watched the 1985 Meryl Streep film adaptation many times. It always spoke to me. Today, for the first time, I read the play, where I gained additional insights including within Hare's "A Note on Performance" where he recognizes the potential problems and discusses his intended goals.

He was right. The show more majority of audiences dislike Susan, in the play and film.

Susan is complex and her reactions are complex. In WWII she was an 18 year old member of Special Operations inside France, an experience that was so intense, so dangerous, and so worthwhile that nothing in ordinary post-WWII English life can compare. She will feel a void the remainder of her life. It will haunt her and yet always be an unnamed, maladapted never-resolved disappointment.

I honestly think, that if this had been presented as a story about a man's similar experience, (like the glimpse of Lazar's life near the end of the play) it would have been more empathetically received. And that is a major point. This is an incredibly perceptive depiction of one way that a highly intelligent, capable woman might attempt to cope with the loss of once having a profound purpose and comradery with the world. We aren't used to being made aware that women also had these kinds of war experiences. I read Hare wrote this play because 75% of women who were in Special Operations divorced in the immediate post war years.

Something significant in their expectations had changed.

Susan is not mean or cruel or cold, although it seems that way to the men in the play. She is honest in a way few of us are, or at least were. Honesty can hurt and especially so, apparently, when coming from a woman to a man. Frankly, she wears her heart on her sleeve, in a way not easily recognized, probably not even by herself.

It might look like a hard heart, or like neurosis. But, goddamn, I admire her fight against utter banality. Futile as it might be, self-destructive as it might be, baffling and hurtful to her husband as it might be, her battle never has cruelty as its goal. Indeed, most of her recurring episodes are trying to wrangle some shred of a higher objective than the bourgeoisie status quo to which the world had gladly and easily slipped into after the war.

Was she ever successful? No.

Every time I've watched (and now have read) this play, my heart hurts a little more. show less

Well, that brought back memories... I was up all night with a newborn baby in 2003 as American tanks rolled into Iraq.

I didn't have high hopes for this when I saw it was one of my set texts, but I thought it was excellent. It radiates anger and is (surprisingly? or not?) so relevant to current politics. I would really like to see this performed.

David Hare's plays are always issue-oriented arguments, which I love. This one pits popular culture against "art" or elite culture, a timely topic for our time (2018). It's also about trust. The Theatre is Dead, says the antagonist, Dominic, a culture critic who ends up making action films. His wife Amy says "Ambition's destroyed him, that's all. Because he thinks that the world of media matters. He actually thinks it's real." The wonderful Judi Dench played Amy's mother, a stage actress who show more makes a bad investment with a man she trusts and ends up in massive amounts of debt. Art and money, media and culture--yes, these are the subjects that obsess us. I would have loved to have seen Dench. I'm sure she would have upped my rating to 5 stars. And theatre, after all, is meant to be seen, not read. show less

Don't read this for a good, happy read. David Hare is a miserable git, by his own admission. The trouble is, that he has some worthwhile things to say. This autobiography takes us from his early days and end with his parents death, the end of his marriage and a questioning of his future as a dramatist.

Hare is brutally honest about his life and never blames others for the painful events that can be found therein. This is a book that you could read, and appreciate, were you to have no passion show more for Hare's oeuvre and don't share his left leaning politics: this is a story about being human. I much admire anyone who can lay themselves bare in this fashion. He never hides from the unpleasant and is far harder upon himself than any body else. I suspect that he is harder on himself than the other players in the drama would be about him too.

A book well worth the read. show less