Talk Radio With a Dose Of Hollywood Talent
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
In “Stuff Happens,” David Hare’s deft docudrama on the run-up to the war in Iraq, the only dull patches occurred when the Colin Powells and Donald Rumsfelds gave way to the pundits. The lighting would shift, and various commentators of all political persuasions would intone miniature position papers. The intention may have been to broaden the viewpoints beyond 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and 10 Downing St., but for just a few unfortunate minutes, Mr. Hare’s intelligently structured procedural morphed into moderately well-informed talk radio.
Picture those op-ed pieces expanded into a full-length vehicle for a film star with rusty stage chops, and you have a pretty good sense of “The Vertical Hour,” the author’s ponderous follow-up to “Stuff Happens.” The war is still very much on Mr. Hare’s mind, but this time he addresses it in a lead-footed parable in which American exceptionalism runs smack into British world-weariness, leaving everyone weepy and chagrined.
It’s the kind of play in which the characters hint at devastating experiences that they’d rather not talk about in Act I, then talk about them in Act II. Tears are shed. Lessons are learned. And on the other side of the footlights, eyes are rolled. Not even an enormously confident performance by the cagey Bill Nighy can rescue Mr. Hare or, sadly, leading lady Julianne Moore, from the quagmire of pop-psychology bromides and potted “Crossfire” chat.
“The Vertical Hour” finds the director, Sam Mendes, and the playwright attempting to split the difference between Mr. Hare’s political works, which would also include “Via Dolorosa,” and his more introspective dramas, such as “Skylight.”The result lands with a thud in the inhospitable middle ground, neither profound enough to work on the former score nor insightful enough to give these mouthpieces a compelling internal life.
The two central combatants are Nadia Blye (Ms. Moore), a political science professor at Yale and a former war correspondent, and Oliver Lucas (Mr. Nighy), a divorced doctor enjoying a slower pace in the Welsh countryside. Nadia is dating Oliver’s semi-estranged son, a physical therapist named Philip (a likable Andrew Scott), and they have taken a weekend vacation to Oliver’s isolated home. (Scott Pask’s spartan set, punctuated by a large tree in full bloom, makes the middle of nowhere look like a very appealing spot.) Philip blames his parents’ divorce on Oliver’s constant infidelities, and sure enough, it doesn’t take long before the old roué begins interrupting the inevitable wine-soaked political arguments with a few of his old moves.
In a brief prologue set at Yale, Nadia is shown berating a buffoonish student for his unchecked faith in capitalism and American dominance. So it comes as a bit of a surprise when Mr. Hare divulges shortly thereafter that Nadia is a neocon fellow traveler, an early proponent of the Iraq war who debriefed President Bush before the invasion. Oliver is ready to pass judgment on Nadia for this alone — “Let’s just say, I knew who the surgeon would be, so I had a fair idea what the operation would look like,” he says — but larger questions of responsibility quickly come to the forefront. (From the audience’s perspective, these arguments transpire with Mr. Nighy sitting at the far left side of the table and Ms. Moore at the far right. The staging does not represent Mr. Mendes’s subtlest work.)
What are the obligations of the only remaining superpower? Is engagement with the outside world a way of avoiding internal turmoil? (Freud is invoked throughout, sometimes perceptively — as when Oliver credits him with “trying to define the impossible line between what we need to suffer and what we don’t” — but more often clunkily.) Oliver claims that his ex-wife “suffered from freedom” — does the same need for ideological confinement afflict the characters on stage? Are Nadia and her boyfriend’s dad gonna, you know, do it?
Far too much time is devoted to this final question: The ongoing flirtation feels contrived from start to stop, although anything’s possible when Mr. Nighy’s seedy glamour is in full throttle. His loose-shouldered, vaguely unpolished body language gives the impression of someone who’s a bit out of practice with seducing women but who could pick it up again quickly.
Mr. Nighy gets most of the juiciest lines, but proves equally dexterous with seemingly innocuous bits of dialogue. (The way he splits the word “fitness” into two equally contemptible syllables while discussing Philip’s job is priceless.) He and Mr. Scott have also been given a handful of compelling father-son scenes, as Philip struggles to decipher Oliver’s blend of heartfelt advice and emotional sabotage.
And Ms. Moore? Well, she comes off better than Julia Roberts, Puff Daddy, or several other celebrities who have run aground on Broadway in recent years. She listens well, for one thing, conveying a plausible blend of empathy and skepticism — it’s easy to picture Nadia as a successful reporter. But a lengthy drunk scene is unconvincing, and her occasional snippets of humor fall flat. Most surprising is her inability to convey the psychological scars she incurred while reporting from Bosnia. In works from “The End of the Affair” to “The Hours” to the underrated “Safe,” Ms. Moore suffers as persuasively as anyone in film, but the sense of trauma presumably lurking just under Nadia’s composed surface remains untapped.
Much of the play is windbaggy and predictable but competent enough, until Mr. Hare wraps things up with a jaw-dropper of an ending in which an abashed Nadia heads back to New Haven, Conn., to proclaim her new career choice. This scene has absolutely nothing to offer beyond what had already been established; in fact, it doesn’t even sound like it comes from the same play. Julianne Moore is the marquee name, the logic seems to go, and so the story must unequivocally resolve itself with her decision.
Dissections of contemporary politics aren’t exactly cluttering Broadway these days, and it would be a pleasure to say that “The Vertical Hour” fills that gap. But punching up the star’s “journey” to send the audience out on a lift is the sort of focusgroup bunk one expects from Hollywood’s studio system at its most craven, not from two highly respected British theater veterans.
Until April 1 (239 W. 45th St., between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, 212-239-6200).