David Hare

David Hare, a sculptor, painter and photographer best known for his early welded-metal abstract sculptures but who devoted most of his later career to painting in the tradition of European surrealists and abstract expressionists, died Dec. 21. Hare, a prominent figure among the first generation of so-called New York School artists, was 75 and died in Jackson Hole, Wyo., after an emergency operation for an aortic aneurysm. He lived in Victor, Ida., his family said.

One of our most endearing qualities as a species is how thoroughly we examine a man-made disaster after it happens, as if understanding one crisis could, despite all evidence to the contrary, ward off the next one. To help us comprehend our current economic crisis, we have a flood of editorials, books, documentaries and now, from London, a uniquely British approach: explanation through theater. The National commissioned David Hare, one of its best, most distinguished playwrights, to write "The Power of Yes," currently on the boards.

For the first time, British playwright David Hare will premiere a play in the United States. "The Vertical Hour" will open on Broadway on Nov. 30 with Julianne Moore in the lead role and Sam Mendes directing. The play, about a teacher at Yale who meets an older man while on vacation in Wales, is described as a work that illustrates "how life has subtly changed for so many people in the West in the new century."

"Time Stands Still," Donald Margulies' compelling if at times elusive drama, which opened Wednesday at the Geffen Playhouse, revolves around a photographer badly injured in Iraq and her reporter boyfriend, who's trying to establish a bit of normalcy with her as she recovers from her wounds. A work that appears at first to be in the mode of British playwright David Hare, one of those politically engaged offerings hashing out the thorny moral questions of the day, turns out to be more focused on the domestic psychology of characters deciding between personal stability and a larger sense of purposefulness.

"I have no theology," says Streaky, a drunk Anglican priest in David Hare's "Racing Demon," which had its American premiere Wednesday at the Doolittle Theatre. And yet Streaky goes on to express his faith in a monologue to God. "The whole thing's so clear. You're there. In people's happiness. Tonight, in the taste of that drink. Or the love of my friends. The whole thing's so simple. Infinitely loving. Why do people find it so hard?"

Change is in the air at South Coast Repertory's Second Stage--and not just the recently announced expansion that will take it from 161 seats to 300. Second Stage traditionally has been reserved for new and rising authors. David Hare, whose 1995 play "Skylight" opens Friday in that venue, is neither.

At a certain point in award-winning British playwright David Hare's newest political drama, based on the real characters and real events of the recent past, the audience is left aghast at the unreality of what is historically true. The United States is attacked. The chief author of those attacks escapes into the mountains. And the U.S.

British playwright David Hare calls "The Blue Room" "sort of an encyclopedia of defensive and offensive strategies that people use in the pursuit of love. What we feel about someone before we make love to them and what we feel after. What survives and what gets wrecked between desire and fulfillment." What survives in this case is a play best known for actress Nicole Kidman's brief onstage nudity during its initial productions in London and New York in 1998.

As a playwright, a stage director and a filmmaker of steadily deepening vision and passion, David Hare has amassed a body of work that views politics and individual lives as intertwined. "To deny that social forces don't have a profound impact on each person," he says emphatically, "is to deny reality." But like any good Briton, Hare worries about his American cousins.

She is Kyra, a teacher who lives to help the disadvantaged. She is someone who cares. He is Tom, an entrepreneur who embodies go-go capitalism. He is an achiever. Once they were lovers. Playwright David Hare, who created these attracting stage opposites, will be fascinated to see whether it is Tom or Kyra who evokes most audience empathy when "Skylight" opens in Los Angeles at the Mark Taper Forum on Thursday. Ambivalence would not dismay him.

Way back in the 1950s, when the world knew of the concentration camps mainly from documentaries, film director Jean-Luc Godard made a famously provocative remark: "If ever a film is to be made about Auschwitz, it will have to be from the point of view of the guards." Clearly, what Godard meant by this was that it would be impossible, on film, to do justice to the suffering of those who died in the camps. No drama, however well intentioned, could possibly be adequate to the events themselves.

PATRICK GOLDSTEIN says he misses "the Harvey Weinstein [he] used to know" -- claiming that "the Oscar impresario who ... was truly, madly, deeply in love with movies" has been replaced by a "slimmed-down mogul ... who has lost his way" ["Please Come Home," April 17]. That's sweet of Patrick (especially the part about my being "slimmed-down"), but it's also a bit disingenuous. I never fell out of love with movies. I did have to spend time building the infrastructure of our new company, but we still produced films I'm extremely proud of, like Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's daring "Grindhouse," Anthony Minghella's beautiful "Breaking and Entering" and the politically charged "Bobby."

All too recognizable elements of present-day conflicts and social dysfunction are projected onto a post-Orwellian future in "A New World War," an angry sci-fi comedy by Rita Valencia presented by Padua Playwrights.

David Hare's "The Vertical Hour" will close early at Broadway's Music Box Theater because it is "expected to recoup its entire capitalization with the week ending March 11," a spokesperson said Wednesday. "In order to maintain that advantageous position for the play's investors, the producers will end the limited engagement three weeks earlier than originally announced (April 1)."

OK, so how did Julianne Moore's Broadway debut compare with Julia Roberts' coolly received one last season? Moore wins by a nose. But David Hare, the esteemed British playwright, shouldn't be smiling. In fact, much of what is lacking in Moore's performance can be attributed to the unconvincing role Hare has written for her. The play is called "The Vertical Hour," and it had its world premiere Thursday at the Music Box under the direction of Sam Mendes.

For the first time, British playwright David Hare will premiere a play in the United States. "The Vertical Hour" will open on Broadway on Nov. 30 with Julianne Moore in the lead role and Sam Mendes directing. The play, about a teacher at Yale who meets an older man while on vacation in Wales, is described as a work that illustrates "how life has subtly changed for so many people in the West in the new century."

All slobbering aside, the new David Hare import that opened last night at the Cort Theatre is . . . oh, what's the use?

After a year of presenting only established Broadway shows, the Ahmanson Theatre's 1994-95 season will take a more adventurous approach. The American premiere of a David Hare play, a new musical revue devoted to the work of Los Angeles-based songwriters Leiber and Stoller, and a stage adaptation of Maxine Hong Kingston's "The Woman Warrior" will join Neil Simon's latest Broadway hit and the already announced "Miss Saigon."

"Stuff Happens": To go to war or not to go to war? That was the question. Written during the aftermath of official combat in Iraq and the buildup to the 2004 presidential campaign, David Hare's work premiered last September on Britain's most prominent stage to standing-room-only crowds, international attention and enthusiastic reviews from London's critics.

JUST over two years ago I seemed always to be in California, taking part in the celebrations surrounding the release of the film I'd written of Michael Cunningham's novel "The Hours." While the creative team was giving interviews and being mildly feted, more than half our minds were on rather more urgent matters: The impending invasion of a sovereign territory by the world's only superpower. I was heading for Los Angeles, by chance, on the day the bombing began.