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The Vertical Hour
"Politics is about the reconciliation of the irreconcilable," says Nadia Blye, a young American war reporter turned academic who teaches political studies at Yale. With her faith in academia beginning to erode and memories from her time in the Balkans and the Middle East haunting her, Nadia travels with her boyfriend, Philip Lucas, to rural England to visit her father, Oliver, who has his own past to reckon with. The challenge of Nadia's encounter with Oliver forces decisions on her that will affect her for the rest of her life.
For thirty-five years, David Hare has written plays that capture the flavor of our times and address the interconnection between our secret motives and our public politics. In The Vertical Hour, he continues his investigation of the morality of international intervention, and of how the war in Iraq impacts the lives of British and American citizens.
128 pages, Paperback
First published December 12, 2006
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61 people want to read
About the author
David Hare
116 books85 followersSir 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...
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...
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
December 17, 2025
A readable and somewhat interesting play due to the political nature of its story. But the dialogue seems too forced and overt, so that the characters felt like vehicles for their words. Conversations between Philip's father (Oliver) and Naomi, and Naomi and her two students, seemed almost implausible: not because they were happening, but because of how immediately personal their conversations became.
Maybe I would change my mind if I saw this acted out, but the raw script left me questioning the plausibility of such a story.
Maybe I would change my mind if I saw this acted out, but the raw script left me questioning the plausibility of such a story.
December 1, 2022
In Stuff Happens, British playwright David Hare laid much of the blame for the current mess in Iraq at the feet of President Bush and other American politicians--quite reasonably, if a bit polemically. In his play The Vertical Hour, which premiered in New York in 2006, he chides Americans in general for doing such a lousy job managing the world's only superpower, implicitly blaming us not only for the War but for many of the country and planet's other ills.
There's a story surrounding all of this: an unpleasant tale of Nadia Blye, an American war correspondent-turned-academic who is famous enough to be on TV and to be asked by Bush himself to serve on some kind of task force about Iraq; her fiancé, a British physical therapist whom she met at her gym; and his rude, contrarian father, with whom they are spending a weekend at his remote home near the border of England and Wales. But it seemed to me that Oliver Lucas, the slyly curmudgeonly would-be father-in-law of our American heroine, was created by his author principally to serve as a mouthpiece for a variety of arguments, mostly about how lazy and thoughtless and wrongheaded Americans are (his son's girlfriend in particular), but also about a number of other social ills such as modern health care and the death of '60s-era idealism. He's like one of those father figures from Shaw, only spouting thoughts much less deeply-felt or well-articulated; a bore, in other words, very like the play surrounding him.
There are two other characters, both students of Nadia's at Yale: a grasping rising Republican and a vague-thinking young woman who's about to abandon her academic career because she's broken up with her boyfriend. These characters appear in scenes that amount to prologue and epilogue to the play, where we first encounter Nadia and then learn what happened to her after she met Oliver. They defy credulity in nearly every way.
I'm not against Hare wanting to make political and social comments in his plays, but I'd prefer that he write believable and interesting ones in which to make them.
There's a story surrounding all of this: an unpleasant tale of Nadia Blye, an American war correspondent-turned-academic who is famous enough to be on TV and to be asked by Bush himself to serve on some kind of task force about Iraq; her fiancé, a British physical therapist whom she met at her gym; and his rude, contrarian father, with whom they are spending a weekend at his remote home near the border of England and Wales. But it seemed to me that Oliver Lucas, the slyly curmudgeonly would-be father-in-law of our American heroine, was created by his author principally to serve as a mouthpiece for a variety of arguments, mostly about how lazy and thoughtless and wrongheaded Americans are (his son's girlfriend in particular), but also about a number of other social ills such as modern health care and the death of '60s-era idealism. He's like one of those father figures from Shaw, only spouting thoughts much less deeply-felt or well-articulated; a bore, in other words, very like the play surrounding him.
There are two other characters, both students of Nadia's at Yale: a grasping rising Republican and a vague-thinking young woman who's about to abandon her academic career because she's broken up with her boyfriend. These characters appear in scenes that amount to prologue and epilogue to the play, where we first encounter Nadia and then learn what happened to her after she met Oliver. They defy credulity in nearly every way.
I'm not against Hare wanting to make political and social comments in his plays, but I'd prefer that he write believable and interesting ones in which to make them.
January 15, 2020
"It's easier to do nothing, than something" Nadia says, but it is the excuse of a person totally convinced of their own righteous intelligence and power. The military industrial complex has taken over American politics and proven that "it is often better to do nothing, than something." Nadia waxes about her heroic struggle to put an end to human suffering, but this is a lie that the war's advocates told themselves. Hussein killed 250,000 Iraqis between 1988-1991, and then 12 years later America came in to kill 200,000 more.
"I'm going back to Iraq" is the closing line of the play. I think that it is meant to feel cathartic, like Nadia has found the purpose that she's been missing. But it ends up hanging in the air as a ghoulish expression of American hubris. We Americans, time and again, get to choose whether we want to go back. And whether it's the Gulf War, the 90s cruise missile strikes, the 2003 invasion, any of the multiple tours of duty that soldiers would later fulfill, the war against ISIS, or strikes against Iranian forces in Iraq...Americans always have the convenience of choice to go back or not, and the 200,000 dead Iraqis don't get a vote; they don't get the choice. Hare couldn't have known that we'd still be there in force 14 years after this play's writing, and he couldn't have known in real time that 2006 and 2007 would be the deadliest years of the war.
This play, like so much political writing in the past two decades, revels in both-sides-ism. It gives the war-mongers the time to build their excuses and obfuscate the truth while enjoying a glass of wine from the safety of a cozy office or a country cottage.
It's convenient for them, that they get to come home from their mistake, because their victims do not.
"I'm going back to Iraq" is the closing line of the play. I think that it is meant to feel cathartic, like Nadia has found the purpose that she's been missing. But it ends up hanging in the air as a ghoulish expression of American hubris. We Americans, time and again, get to choose whether we want to go back. And whether it's the Gulf War, the 90s cruise missile strikes, the 2003 invasion, any of the multiple tours of duty that soldiers would later fulfill, the war against ISIS, or strikes against Iranian forces in Iraq...Americans always have the convenience of choice to go back or not, and the 200,000 dead Iraqis don't get a vote; they don't get the choice. Hare couldn't have known that we'd still be there in force 14 years after this play's writing, and he couldn't have known in real time that 2006 and 2007 would be the deadliest years of the war.
This play, like so much political writing in the past two decades, revels in both-sides-ism. It gives the war-mongers the time to build their excuses and obfuscate the truth while enjoying a glass of wine from the safety of a cozy office or a country cottage.
It's convenient for them, that they get to come home from their mistake, because their victims do not.
March 11, 2022
Ο εκπληκτικός Ντέιβιντ Χέαρ μας παρουσιάζει άλλο ένα πολιτικό έργο, που επικεντρώνεται κυρίως στην διαφορά της νοοτροπίας μεταξύ Αμερικανών και Άγγλων. Η Αμερικάνα δημοσιογράφος και καθηγήτρια Νάντια περνά τη ζωή της ως πολεμική ανταποκρίτρια στο Ιράκ και στη Γιουγκοσλαβία αλλά και ως καθηγήτρια πολιτικών επιστημών στο Γέιλ. Γνωρίζεται με τον Φίλιπ Λούκας, έναν Άγγλο φυσιοθεραπευτή, κάνουν δεσμό και αποφασίζουν να περάσουν ένα διήμερο στα σύνορα Αγγλίας και Ουαλίας μαζί με τον πατέρα του Φίλιπ, τον Όλιβερ. Ο Όλιβερ είναι γιατρός και μετά το διαζύγιό του, μένει μόνος του στην επαρχία. Η Νάντια και ο Όλιβερ θα συζητήσουν για τον πόλεμο, την πολιτική και τις ανθρώπινες σχέσεις. Για την Νάντια πατριωτισμός είναι να αγαπάς τις ΗΠΑ και να δικαιοογείς όλες τις επεμβάσεις της στις πολιτικές όλου του κόσμου. Ναι μεν λυπάται για τα θύματα των πολεμικών συγγρούσεων αλλά θεωρεί επιβεβλημένη την διαρκή παρουσία της πατρίδας της και την στρατιωτική ανάμειξή της στις άλλες χώρες, γιατί ¨καλύτερα να κάνεις κάτι παρά να μην κάνεις τίποτα¨. Ο Όλιβερ θεωρεί πατριωτισμό και νιώθει περήφανος για την Αγγλία μέσα από την ποίηση του Μπλέικ. Δυο κοσμοθεωρίες εντελώς διαφορετικές μεταξύ τους αλλά δυο άνθρωποι που τελικά θα συμφωνήσουν σε αρκετά.
October 7, 2018
To begin with, the core idea behind this play was indeed a noble one - Can the art of politics, that is the art of reconciling the irreconcilable, be extended to humans too? Or are we two-faced Januses hiding someone different underneath, due to which reconciliation is often difficult committing us only to drawn out compromises both in relationships & politics?
With a minefield of relationships being explored, political opinions gauged, motivations towards life examined, it began to feel that this play has bitten more than it can chew. Towards, the end when the story reached its finale, I wasn't elated but felt rather disappointed at squandered opportunities.
My Rating - 3/5
With a minefield of relationships being explored, political opinions gauged, motivations towards life examined, it began to feel that this play has bitten more than it can chew. Towards, the end when the story reached its finale, I wasn't elated but felt rather disappointed at squandered opportunities.
My Rating - 3/5
February 20, 2020
40. The Vertical Hour by David Hare
Another play about class struggle and politics. Usually I like Hare’s plays, but this one sat on the page. I found it way too preachy, even though I was in agreement with the basic premise: that the military-industrial complex has become way too prevalent and how wrong the Iraq War was. Nadia, who teaches international politics in the US, and who was in Serbia for the war there, goes to visit Oliver, the father of her boyfriend, Phillip. The concept of the duty to intervene is discussed. There could have been real fireworks, but there was barely a fizzle. Not so much dated, as hopeless.
Another play about class struggle and politics. Usually I like Hare’s plays, but this one sat on the page. I found it way too preachy, even though I was in agreement with the basic premise: that the military-industrial complex has become way too prevalent and how wrong the Iraq War was. Nadia, who teaches international politics in the US, and who was in Serbia for the war there, goes to visit Oliver, the father of her boyfriend, Phillip. The concept of the duty to intervene is discussed. There could have been real fireworks, but there was barely a fizzle. Not so much dated, as hopeless.
March 30, 2019
I really like David Hare's writing. I get his name confused with David Rabe's and that's really wrong, because I really dislike Rabe's writing. But Hare has this ability to take large ideas about the world and relate them to personal issues going on with his characters. While Oliver, Philip, and Nadia would all be great fun to play as characters, and while this play would be a joy to direct, I'm not sure I'd enjoy seeing it as an audience member. On the other hand, it definitely works as a literature piece to be read.
October 28, 2020
I saw a production of this at the Lantern Theater in Philadelphia that was terrific. I wanted to read it to delve into its subjects again. Hare is one of the most astute and talented authors when it comes to combining the personal and the political.
October 23, 2019
Love teaching this play.
May 1, 2021
An interesting exploration of who we are vrs what we present ourselves as.
January 31, 2011
A complex story which examines the fragile dynamics between father and son, son and girlfriend, girlfriend and father, and relationships in general. A story of love, and how interchangeable feelings sometimes do not co-align.
A father (Oliver) unchanged in his promiscuous ways, floats through life unwilling to change his hurtful attitudes towards his son. Two opposite people whose only common thread is their blood. Each out in their own and unintentional ways to destroy each other.
A son chained to love. Chained to his ideas of what love should be and the rules he applies to said love. Very much like his mother, Phillip embodies the line "it is harder to let go." In the end it's the entangled relationship he has with his father that destroys his current relationship to Nadia.
A girlfriend thrown from the fields of the Iraq war, and emotionally torn from a passionate yet unstable love find solitude in the arms of Phillip. As she calls it a quieter love. Though it's this quieter love that should be her undoing. A free spirit, the weight of domesticated life pushes down on her forcing her to escape, be it in the perhaps waiting arms of her boyfriend's father or back to a life on the battlefields of Iraq.
A study on conflicting personalities and the relationships that they find involved in. A well written play, perhaps a little obtuse. The interaction between the three characters while well developed perhaps could have been expanded upon with the addition of Phillip's mother. We only hear her perspective on her failed marriage through the eyes of her son and ex-husband. Though her own words perhaps could have filled in the missing gaps left behind from her son's and ex-husbands own interpretation of destructive relationship she had with Oliver.
In short a play I would highly recommend. It is a quick read and a pleasant way to spend a afternoon.
A father (Oliver) unchanged in his promiscuous ways, floats through life unwilling to change his hurtful attitudes towards his son. Two opposite people whose only common thread is their blood. Each out in their own and unintentional ways to destroy each other.
A son chained to love. Chained to his ideas of what love should be and the rules he applies to said love. Very much like his mother, Phillip embodies the line "it is harder to let go." In the end it's the entangled relationship he has with his father that destroys his current relationship to Nadia.
A girlfriend thrown from the fields of the Iraq war, and emotionally torn from a passionate yet unstable love find solitude in the arms of Phillip. As she calls it a quieter love. Though it's this quieter love that should be her undoing. A free spirit, the weight of domesticated life pushes down on her forcing her to escape, be it in the perhaps waiting arms of her boyfriend's father or back to a life on the battlefields of Iraq.
A study on conflicting personalities and the relationships that they find involved in. A well written play, perhaps a little obtuse. The interaction between the three characters while well developed perhaps could have been expanded upon with the addition of Phillip's mother. We only hear her perspective on her failed marriage through the eyes of her son and ex-husband. Though her own words perhaps could have filled in the missing gaps left behind from her son's and ex-husbands own interpretation of destructive relationship she had with Oliver.
In short a play I would highly recommend. It is a quick read and a pleasant way to spend a afternoon.
April 19, 2007
This play had potential which didn't materialize, although I am happy to say it avoided the now cliche story line of woman ditches her boyfriend to sleep with his distinguished (guy code for OLD) father.
Three main problems with this play:
(1) it talks a lot about disciplines that it apparently knows very little about (i.e. political science, conflict studies)
(2) it's heroine is not very inspiring-- she is supposed to be this provocative intelligent spitfire of a woman, instead she comes off as someone who is narcissistic, touting how she was a journalist to have people worship her with no humility-- she keeps saying she was there with no acknowledgment of how she was a SPECTATOR and could leave whenever she wanted, plus she's a flirt
(3) it has a sloppy command of language-- David Hare-- take note: saying someone is American in a play does NOT just mean that the person speaks English with an American accent. We use English differently, we speak English differently. There were several examples of such sloppiness-- the first the comes to mind is having the American girl use the word "fancy" to describe someone liking someone else. We just don't say that-- and don't tell me it was meant to be tongue n' cheek because there were all sorts of these errors.
Just like the American dialect issue this whole play is about sloppy generalizations by a playwright who knows that his name, along with the political sexiness of the topic, will fill the house.
Three main problems with this play:
(1) it talks a lot about disciplines that it apparently knows very little about (i.e. political science, conflict studies)
(2) it's heroine is not very inspiring-- she is supposed to be this provocative intelligent spitfire of a woman, instead she comes off as someone who is narcissistic, touting how she was a journalist to have people worship her with no humility-- she keeps saying she was there with no acknowledgment of how she was a SPECTATOR and could leave whenever she wanted, plus she's a flirt
(3) it has a sloppy command of language-- David Hare-- take note: saying someone is American in a play does NOT just mean that the person speaks English with an American accent. We use English differently, we speak English differently. There were several examples of such sloppiness-- the first the comes to mind is having the American girl use the word "fancy" to describe someone liking someone else. We just don't say that-- and don't tell me it was meant to be tongue n' cheek because there were all sorts of these errors.
Just like the American dialect issue this whole play is about sloppy generalizations by a playwright who knows that his name, along with the political sexiness of the topic, will fill the house.
January 9, 2016
The Vertical Hour was an impulse buy, after reading Stuff Happens I had an idea to approach another David Hare play and there are a number out there. There is as much politics in this as Stuff, but here we see made up people thrown together in a fantastically strange way. At first I felt the character's hard-line political view would ruin the piece, but later on I realised that The Vertical Hour is very much the exploration of perspectives. The main crux of the play centers three, a father, his son and the latter's American girlfriend. They are all amazingly flawed individuals. You're never completely left knowing if there's meant to be a bad guy, and when reflecting on it, I enjoy that fact; it's an illustration of life, not good vs evil, they're all as bad as each other yet who can blame them. Hare has a perfect knack for the pace of his drama and the pace of his characters; throughout the stage directions kept on instigation the pauses and highlighting smiling, which all in all, whoever it may come from, always seems a touch false.
I feel like I came out of this thinking about it more and the characters that inhabited the play more than with Stuff. It's a testament to the writing that I think Oliver will haunt me for a while to come, and yet I can't place my finger on why.
I will definitely approach more Hare in the future, just next time, a little less political.
I feel like I came out of this thinking about it more and the characters that inhabited the play more than with Stuff. It's a testament to the writing that I think Oliver will haunt me for a while to come, and yet I can't place my finger on why.
I will definitely approach more Hare in the future, just next time, a little less political.
November 19, 2007
It is a political drama play.
But wait, don't get discouraged by this. I am also not into reading politics. But when saw a Broadway play this year, with Julianne Moore stage debut (she was the reason I went to see the play) - I absolutely loved it! And had to buy the book to read it again.
It is about an American female activist, who was a war reporter, and became an academic to teach political studies at Yale.
She is dating this British guy, and goes to England to visit his father, a rich British doctor. The dialog that they engage in is intriguing and arousing, shows how the American and British cultures clash, and how the rest of the world is looking at the recent American invasion of Iraq, and how Americans perceive it.
At the same time, it is also about the personal choices that we make in this life, the people we are with, the people that we connect with, etc.
Read it! You will love it!
But wait, don't get discouraged by this. I am also not into reading politics. But when saw a Broadway play this year, with Julianne Moore stage debut (she was the reason I went to see the play) - I absolutely loved it! And had to buy the book to read it again.
It is about an American female activist, who was a war reporter, and became an academic to teach political studies at Yale.
She is dating this British guy, and goes to England to visit his father, a rich British doctor. The dialog that they engage in is intriguing and arousing, shows how the American and British cultures clash, and how the rest of the world is looking at the recent American invasion of Iraq, and how Americans perceive it.
At the same time, it is also about the personal choices that we make in this life, the people we are with, the people that we connect with, etc.
Read it! You will love it!
August 14, 2016
There's a lot of very interesting conversations in this. However, it hangs on very thin 2-dimensional characters. I found the character Nadia to be a shell, and Phillip, and Oliver are just mouthpieces for a playwright that really wants to make a political treatise. I donot think Hare delves into the political connection in enough in these characters. I come away thinking "Nihilism" comes out of missing one's lover--- that is exactly the kind of thing an "innocent" might say. This play is far too simple. It feeds the audience thoughts they already think. Here's a playwright who is nursing you a long. However, there's one or two wonderful thoughts on Iraq but absolutely no sense of humour.
July 17, 2007
Deals with the two arguments for and against America's invasion of Iraq from the perspective of an American humanitarian activist and rich British country doctor. Julianne Moore was dreadful in the debut, but the script survived her galling ineptitude, a testament to the writing. Bill Nighy is of course unequivocally wonderful as the British doctor. The play offers a very unbiased offering of the debate, and stimulates hours of discussion.
May 30, 2008
The task of mixing politics with drama without sounding pedantic or jingoistic or fanatic is difficult to pull off. This play subtly weaves love, ego, politics, and academia into a nice read. It won't knock your pants off like a tumbler of Johnny Walker Black. Instead it sips like a snifter of Remy Martin Cognac. Subtle and tasty.
January 4, 2008
Quite simply my favorite play ever. On the surface, it may seem hard to understand, but once you get into it, get to know and understand the characters, it just gets under your skin. Or it did mine. LOVE it!!! (Probably didn't hurt I saw it 10 times on Broadway!)
February 11, 2009
Terrific multi-dimensional play. The 'meeting the parents' trope as political metaphor.
June 21, 2011
kinda odd. i liked it
July 26, 2012
A bit anti-war, political for my taste.
April 3, 2015
Intriguing and tense, if verbose, political and internecine family drama.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews