Hare shows us exactly why society needs theatre
He snarls as he watches the obfuscation on the news
Theatre
Beat the Devil
★★★★ ✩
How’s this for a rude reawakening? After more than five months of our theatres staying firmly, sadly (and ruinously) closed, down beside Tower Bridge the doors have finally been flung open again with a heartstopping flourish.
Living up to his name, David Hare – still our foremost political playwright – has raced out a play for today, one that delivers a first-hand account of falling ill with the coronavirus and a broadside assault on the Government’s handling of the crisis.
Adding clout and glamour is the A-list presence of Ralph Fiennes, treading the boards again ahead of reappearing on the big screen as M in the imminent Bond film.
Fiennes does a remarkably uncanny job of “playing” the author as he relives his ailing condition and rails against those who messed up.
Coincidentally, the 73-year-old playwright succumbed to Covid-19 in March – at almost the same time that the theatres were closed down.
It has to be said: God, it’s good to be back – and hats off to Nick Hytner, who has stolen a march on his former stomping ground along the river, the National, by directing this swift, succinct solo and making it part of a 12-strong monologue season.
Whether government ministers, and the PM, should be rushing to take a pew is another matter; there’s enough invective here to have them blushing behind their face masks.
We had fair warning that Hare
– at his best when indignant and journalistically insightful – was on the warpath when he surfaced on the Radio 4 programme in April, complaining that the Government’s handling of the emergency was worse than the Suez Crisis and the Iraq War.
Similar sentiments are aired here, in what is a clinically critical and surprisingly impassioned 50 minutes – probably Hare’s most personal piece to date. With Fiennes taking centre stage (he’s nobly doing this between two and three times a day, to boost the income stream) in Hare-style blue shirt and grey jeans, hunched and pensive, planting himself round a writer’s desk – almost knowingly awkward – the excoriation begins.
Infected while working in a clammy TV production suite, the physical ailments are relayed with the kind of droll, quotable detachment that is Hare’s forte. “Everything tastes of sewage,” Fiennes intones as Hare describes the onset of the symptoms and progression of the virus: lakes of sweat, loss of weight, copious vomiting, his wife, Nicole Farhi at one point – incredibly – snuggling up to try to make him feel better.
We also get an interwoven anatomisation of the failing body politic – “If I wasn’t gagging, I’d gag,” he snarls as he watches the obfuscation on the news – the delivery tilting from matter of fact nonchalance to cold fury as he registers the UK’s rising death toll and care-homes tragedy.
“I have survivor’s rage.” Whether you agree with his diagnosis or not, the piece grips in its light-touch incisiveness. It reminds us why Hare matters and serves as a vital reminder of why we need theatre – as a place to gather together to confront society’s darkest days and demons.
Until Oct 31. bridgetheatre.co.uk