"The Vertical Hour" on Broadway

[question everything]

David Hare is a political playwright with artistic instincts, and in "The Vertical Hour" he gives them the upper hand... Julianne Moore plays Nadia Blye, a liberal professor who backed the war but now has doubts, and her performance is just right: simple, unmannered, even a bit naïve. Bill Nighy, by contrast, is sensationally mannered as Oliver Lucas, the ravaged, self-hating Brit who serves as Mr. Hare's mouthpiece -- he flops around the stage like a middle-aged rubber band -- but he's so charismatic that it doesn't matter. The juxtaposition of American innocence with European experience is an over-obvious device, but Mr. Hare manages to make it work until the very last scene, a What-It-All-Means coda blatant enough to have been lifted from a Neil LaBute play.

Sam Mendes's staging is as lucid and lovely as Ms. Moore's acting, and Scott Pask has come up with a pleasingly Chekhov-like outdoor setting for the climactic confrontation between Nadia and Oliver. The supporting cast is excellent. I wish Mr. Hare would cut that last scene -- he's too good a writer to spell out things that are better left unsaid -- but even as is, "The Vertical Hour" is a superior piece of work.

From a review in the WSJ by Terry Teachout

[jannyk]

1. Bill Nighy is one of the best actors around

I wish I could go see this.

Did you see the Charlie Rose interview with Hare tonight? He explained that when he first wrote it (and for it's West End run), that he had basically written Colin Powell as a 'victim'. But that over time he began to believe Powell was complicit, or at least an enabler, and rewrote the script to reflect this.

They showed a clip and it looks fabulous.

[question everything]

2. No, I think that Charlie Rose is too late for me

but perhaps I should.

A few years ago we spent a week in NYC to see some plays and shows and this gave me a taste to try it again... once we pay our current credit cards bills :evilfrown: