|
|
 |
| |
| Hare’s gift transplanted
from the stage to page |
A book by David Hare carries the same devastating
power as his plays, but Gerald Isaaman says he lets today’s
political elite off the hook
Obedience, Struggle and Revolt by David Hare
Faber and Faber, £12.99
|
David Hare’s play, Stuff Happens, at the National Theatre
last autumn
David Hare
|
NATURAL events have always headed the list when it comes to changing
the world. Plagues, pestilence, famine, earthquakes, tornadoes and
tsunamis are way ahead of polemical playwrights when it comes to
making life better.
But that doesn’t deter David Hare, the knighted playwright
from Hampstead, who began his career virtually overnight with a
travelling theatre group after winning an MA in English from Jesus
College, Cambridge, in 1968.
Discovering that a newly commissioned work had not been delivered
to his Portable Theatre, and with just four days to go until curtain
up, he sat down and wrote what he now describes as “a primitive
satire on the unlikelihood of revolution in Britain”.
He hasn’t stopped shattering us with words ever since. And
perhaps that is why he takes the title for his new book, Obedience,
Struggle and Revolt, from Balzac, who claimed that obedience is
dull, struggle definitely hazardous and revolt impossible.
Yet hazardous Hare has always sought the alternative road to Utopia,
knowing that it is out of reach.
He is a political playwright of passion and commitment who has earned
himself an inspired audience that applauds his work.
The evidence for that success is equally on display in this little
book of eight public lectures he has delivered over the years, plus
seven other pieces.
They provide the raison d’état for his belief that the
theatre is the platform from which change will erupt.
It is a gem, bubbling with wit and wonder, intellectual analysis
and drive, a veritable bible for those who, like Hare, believe the
play can offer insights and solutions to those who mesmerise us
with abuse, greed and corruption, as is to be seen almost daily
in headlines.
Like an orchestra warming up, you soon pick up the essence of his
beliefs as he brilliantly works them up into crescendos, heaving
with anger and hope that prods and penetrates your conscience, like
a sermon on the mount from the summit of Hampstead.
As he pinpoints his serious concerns about the decadent west, you
find yourself unconsciously nodding in agreement, dancing with delight,
enjoying the bright sharpness of his thoughts that allows him to
demolish the awfulness of the political process, the press and the
contempt and confusion that debases cultural life.
Here is the urbane warrior, now 58, at work with his machete, slashing
through the jungle of hypocrisy and hate with elegant tirades that
demand to be listened to.
His eulogy for John Osborne, for example, is an excellent example
of his talents. He admits he has been wrong, he exposes his own
contradictions and failures, and yet his compelling belief in justice
and truth is so strong and infectious that you can ignore or put
aside any naïve faults.
Where he has perhaps gone wrong is in failing to provide a new essay
to stimulate practical action by our leaders. He ought to reform
his travelling theatre and invade the cabinet room at Number 10,
to ensure that his song is heard and sung.
Why else did he accept a knighthood? |
|
|
