David Hare: A BBC Radio Drama Collection: 8 Full-Cast Productions Including Plenty, Skylight, Amy’s View & Others

by David Hare, Anthony Hopkins (Narrator), Bill Nighy (Narrator)

Eight incisive dramas by the internationally renowned playwright - plus bonus interview.

Writer and director David Hare is one of England's leading political dramatists, celebrated for his many award-winning plays analysing the morality of contemporary Britain. This collection comprises some of his most acclaimed pieces, as well as a fascinating radio interview with Hare himself.

It opens with his two acknowledged Plenty and Amy's View. These mesmerising dramas, both spanning several decades, present vivid portraits of strong women diminished by circumstance, metaphorically evoking the changing values and collapsing ideals of the postwar period. These are followed by Knuckle, a fast-paced parody of the American hardboiled thriller set in the Home Counties; and Pravda, co-written with Howard Brenton, a satirical comedy about a monstrous media tycoon.

Also included are The Bay at Nice, set in 1950s Russia and exploring the nature of art and freedom; Skylight, about the reunion between a Thatcherite entrepreneur and his onetime mistress; Racing Demon, the first in a trilogy of plays about British institutions, focusing on the Church of England in crisis; and the play in which Hare made his acting the powerful monologue Via Dolorosa, a meditation on his extraordinary 1997 trip to Israel and Palestine.

Among the stellar Jane Lapotalre, Zoë Wanamaker, Judi Dench, Samantha Bond, Anthony Hopkins, Bill Nighy, Robert Glenister, Stephen Tompkinson, Ronald Pickup, Geoffrey Palmer, Stella Gonet and Paul McGann.

In an interview for the World Service arts programme Meridian, David Hare talks about why he enjoys writing good parts for women, what he believes plays can achieve that other media cannot and the capacity of art to change society.

Production credits

Written by David Hare.

Pravda written by David Hare and Howard Brenton.

Text copyright David Hare 1974 (Knuckle), 1978 (Plenty), 1986 (The Bay at Nice), 1990 (Racing Demon), 1995 (Skylight), 1997 (Amy's View), 1998 (Via Dolorosa). Pravda text copyright David Hare and Howard Brenton 1985.

All rights reserved.

Special thanks to The British Library and Keith Wickham for sourcing audio files.

Content list



Plenty Amy's View Knuckle Pravda The Bay at Nice Skylight Racing Demon Via Dolorosa Bonus interview

David Hare

First broadcast BBC World Service, 21st October 1991

Audible Audio

Published November 25, 2021

About the author

Sir David Hare (born 5 June 1947) is an English playwright, screenwriter and theatre and film director. Most notable for his stage work, Hare has also enjoyed great success with films, receiving two Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay for writing The Hours in 2002, based on the novel written by Michael Cunningham, and The Reader in 2008, based on the novel of the same name written by Bernhard Schlink.

On West End, he had his greatest success with the plays Plenty, which he adapted into a film starring Meryl Streep in 1985, Racing Demon (1990), Skylight (1997), and Amy's View (1998). The four plays ran on Broadway in 1982–83, 1996, 1998 and 1999 respectively, earning Hare three Tony Award nominations for Best Play for the first three and two Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play. Other notable projects on stage include A Map of the World, Pravda, Murmuring Judges, The Absence of War and The Vertical Hour. He wrote screenplays for the film Wetherby and the BBC drama Page Eight (2011).

As of 2013, Hare has received two Academy Award nominations, three Golden Globe Award nominations, three Tony Award nominations and has won a BAFTA Award, a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and two Laurence Olivier Awards. He has also been awarded several critics' awards such as the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and received the Golden Bear in 1985. He was knighted in 1998.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ha...