The Absence of War offers a meditation on the classic problems of leadership, and is the third part of a critically acclaimed trilogy of plays (Racing Demon, Murmuring Judges) about British institutions. Its unsparing portrait of a Labour Party torn between past principles and future prosperity, and of a deeply sympathetic leader doomed to failure, made the play hugely controversial and prophetic when it was first presented at the National Theatre, London, in 1993. The Absence of War is much more than a piece of skilled reporting. It is actually cast as a classic tragedy.' Guardian

Kyra is surprised to see the son of her former lover at her apartment in a London slum. He hopes she will reconcile with his distraught, now widowed, father. Tom, a restless, self-made restaurant and hotel tycoon, arrives later that evening, unaware of his son's visit. Kyra, who was his invaluable business associate and a close family friend until his wife discovered their affair, has since found a vocation teaching underprivileged children. Is the gap between them unbridgeable, or can they resurrect their relationship?1 woman, 2 men

Russia, late summer at the close of the nineteenth century. Vanya and his niece Sonya have worked for years to manage the country estate. Into this ordered and regular household come two new visitors, Sonya's father, an irritable professor, and his young wife Elena who, in the space of a few months, cause chaos, one by their selfishness, and the other by their sexual allure. Between them, they manage to have most of the inhabitants questioning their purpose in life, their happiness and, at times, their sanity. David Hare's version of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya opens at Theatre Royal Bath in July 2019.

Forming the first part of the David Hare Trilogy (which also comprises of Murmuring Judges and The Absence of War) Racing Demon focuses on the Church of England. A disparate body, the Church now finds itself attracting unwanted publicity, wracked by the dissension of its members on matters of doctrine and practice and at odds with the government. In this climate the Reverend Lionel Espy and his team of clergymen struggle to make sense of their mission in South London, as the arrival of a zealous young curate intensifies their personal and professional problems.3 women, 8 men

When, in 2000, the National Theatre published its poll of the hundred best plays of the 20th century, David Hare had written five of them. Yet he was born in 1947 into an anonymous suburban street in Hastings. It is a world he believes to be as completely vanished as Victorian England. Now in his first panoramic work of memoir, ending as Margaret Thatcher comes to power in 1979, David Hare describes his childhood, his Anglo-Catholic education and his painful apprenticeship to the trade of dramatist. He sets the progress of his own life against the history of a time in which faith in hierarchy, deference, religion, the empire and finally politics all withered away. Only belief in private virtue remains. In his customarily dazzling prose and with great warmth and humour, David Hare explores how so radical a shift could have occurred, and how it is reflected in his own lifelong engagement with two disparate art forms - film and theatre. In The Blue Touch Paper David Hare describes a life of trial and error: both how he became a writer and the high price he and those around him paid for that decision.

In this radical new version of Peer Gynt, David Hare kidnaps Henrik Ibsen's most famous hero and runs away with him into the twenty-first century. Stripped of fretwork and greenery, the play is projected into a freewheeling modern world of music, dance, poetry, weddings, coronations, trolls and two-headed children as Peter steals a bride and embarks on an extraordinary lifetime's journey before returning home, finally, to Scotland. David Hare's Peter Gynt posits the same fundamental question the great Norwegian asked in 1867: does a belief in individualism help or hinder us in trying to live purposefully in the present day? The play opens at the National Theatre in July 2019 and transfers to the Festival Theatre Edinburgh, for the Edinburgh International Festival.

Anton Chekhov is one of the undisputed masters of world drama. He is usually thought to hide himself behind his characters and stories, keeping his own personality well off-stage. But when he was young he wrote three plays - Platonov, Ivanov and The Seagull - which, with their thrilling sunbursts of youthful anger and romanticism, reveal a very different playwright from the one known by his mature, more familiar work. Young Chekhov brings these three blazing dramas together in versions by internationally acclaimed dramatist David Hare, offering the chance to explore the birth of a revolutionary dramatic voice. The plays show a writer freeing himself from the constraints of nineteenth-century melodrama and herald the shift into the twentieth century, and the birth of the modern stage. The Young Chekhov season premiered at the Chichester Festival Theatre in the autumn of 2015.

'A writing career which is the most consistently adventurous of any British dramatist.' Observer Recording dizzying changes in culture and politics, this is a powerful compilation of prose and poetry by one of the distinctive thinkers of our time. The elegant essays range from a celebration of Mad Men to a diagnosis of the incoherence of Conservatism in the new century. The poems, in contrast, are private, tender meditations. 'Always, there is a breadth and a caustic wit reminiscent of his idol Chekhov.' Spectator 'David Hare's great quality has always been his refusal to accept the division between fact and imagination. His creative invention is fired by public realities and in turn he makes those realities feel deeply personal. That same quality is wonderfully at work in his essays and poems. Whether he is writing about Tony Blair or Joan Didion, whether he is writing out of love or rage, evoking the intimate moments of his own life or the great moral questions of our times, he brings his subjects to life with an irresistible immediacy. All the wit, combativeness, energy and edge he has brought to the stage are present here on the page.' Fintan O'Toole 'A reliable source of delight.' New Statesman

What is a political playwright? Does theatre have any direct effect on society? Why choose to work in a medium which speaks to so few? Is theatre itself facing oblivion? All frequent questions addressed to David Hare over the last thirty-five years, as his work has taken him from the travelling fringe to the National Theatre, from seasons on Broadway to performances in prisons, church halls and on bare floors. Since 1978, Hare has sought uniquely to address these and other questions in occasional lectures given both in Britain and abroad. Now, for the first time, these lectures are collected together with some of his more recent prose pieces about God, Iraq, Israel/Palestine and the privatisation of the railways. Bringing to the lectern the same wit, insight and gift for the essential for which his plays are known, Hare presents the distilled result of a lifetime's sustained thinking about art and politics.

I want to give my country a model of perfection. My country needs cheering up. I'm the man to do it. A man of great passions, John Christie wooed his opera singer wife with a determination befitting a man who won the Military Cross at the Battle of Loos. Now, in 1934, this Etonian science teacher's admiration for the works of Wagner has led him to embark on the construction of an opera house on his Sussex estate. Then, by chance, he hears word of a group of refugees from Nazi Germany who may perhaps deliver his vision of the sublime - assuming they're willing to cast his wife in the lead. David Hare's The Moderate Soprano tells the story of how Glyndebourne, this most English of institutions, derives its character firstly from a woman and secondly from an Austrian and two Germans. The play premiered at Hampstead Theatre in 2015, and opened at the Duke of York's Theatre, London, in April 2018. 'In the grand tradition of Bulgakov's Black Snow, a penetrating way of investigating the politics of life in general through the troubled internal politics of a particular theatrical institution. Fervently recommended.' Independent 'A loving portrayal of the mix of vision, stubbornness, grit, love and luck that can produce great art.' Financial Times

For forty uninterrupted years, Robert Moses was the most powerful man in New York. Though never elected to office, he manipulated those who were through a mix of guile, charm and intimidation. Motivated at first by a determination to improve the lives of New York City's workers, he created parks, bridges and 627 miles of expressway to connect the people to the great outdoors. But in the 1950s, groups of citizens began to organize against his schemes and against the motor car, campaigning for a very different idea of what a city should be. David Hare's blazing account of a man - played by Ralph Fiennes - whose iron will exposed the weakness of democracy in the face of charismatic conviction, premieres at the Bridge Theatre, London, in March 2022.

In David Hare's "greatest play" (City Limits) two sisters, Isobel, a serene and good person, and Marion, an ambitious Tory Junior Minister, gather at the home of their late father for his funeral. Katherine, the sisters' young, alcoholic, stepmother, announces her intention of joining Isobel's design company. Reluctantly Isobel agrees and this act paves the way for tragedy and disaster involving Isobel's lover Irwin, and Marion's evangelical, earnest husband Tom.4 women, 2 men

Full Length, Drama

Characters: 3 male, 2 female

Unit Sets

David Hare's new play The Vertical Hour is a thought-provoking exploration of how the political can sometimes intersect, collide with and ultimately dismantle the personal. While the play is positively brimming with cogent and fascinating arguments involving the current political situation, the production only fitfully succeeds in bringing this story to life. Hare fills The Vertical Hour with several of these ethical and philosophical quandaries that serve not only as dramatic interplay between the three main characters, but, also metaphorically as the basis for several of the arguments politicians and intellectuals are having these days concerning the role that America and the West have taken in Iraq, the Middle East and beyond.

Introduced by the author, this first volume of David Hare's plays contains his work from the seventies, including the landmark play of that decade, Plenty (1978), which deals with the subservience of journalists to the power-hungry businessmen that dominate London's Fleet Street. Also included in this edition is Teeth 'n Smiles (1975), a satirical commentary on the state of modern British society; Slag (1970), set in a school for girls, which tells the story of three teachers who attempt to establish an alternative society—while deciding to abstain from sex—and won him the Evening Standard Award for most promising new playwright; Knuckle (1974), the first of Hare's plays to be produced in London's West End, which received the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Award; and Licking Hilter (1978), a teleplay written for the BBC, set in World War II to examine the pervasiveness of lies in English culture.

Arthur Schnitzler described Reigen, his loose series of sexual sketches, as "completely unprintable, " and indeed its premiere in 1921 spurred an obscenity suit. It was only when Max Ophuls made his famous film in 1950 that the work became better known as La Ronde. Now David Hare has reset these circular scenes of love and betrayal in the present day, with a cast of two actors playing a succession of characters whose sexual lives enmesh like a daisy chain. The Blue Room is a meditation on men and women, sex and social class, actors and the theater. With deft insight about the gap between the sexes, The Blue Room takes the treacherous Freudian subject of projection and desire and reinvents it in a bittersweet landscape that is both eternal and completely up-to-date.

"If equal affection cannot be Let the more loving one be me." --W.H. Auden Oscar Wilde's relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas has inspired contemporary writers for decades. In his heartbreaking account of love tested to destruction, David Hare presents his powerful interpretation of what may have happened behind closed doors between Wilde and Douglas. The Judas Kiss lays bare the drama of two critical moments in Wilde's last years: the day he decides to stay in England and face imprisonment, and the night after his release, two years later, when the lover for whom he risked and lost everything betrays him. With a quiet but burning sense of outrage, The Judas Kiss presents the consequences of taking an uncompromisingly moral position in a world defined by fear, expedience, and conformity.

The Hours is David Hare's screen adaptation of Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. In Richmond, England in 1923, Virginia Woolf is setting out to write the first words of her new book. In Los Angeles in 1951, a housewife, Laura Brown, is contemplating suicide. And in present-day New York, a hostess, Clarissa Vaughan, is planning a party for her friends. In extraordinary and ingenious ways, the film shows how a single day - and the novel Mrs Dalloway - inextricably link the lives of three very different women.

Schnitzler described Reigen, his loose series of sexual sketches, as 'completely unprintable'. The company that first presented them was prosecuted for obscenity in 1921. It was only when Max Ophuls made his famous film in 1950 that the work became better known as La Ronde. Now David Hare has re-set these circular scenes of love and betrayal in the present day. Using as much imaginative freedom in his turn as Ophuls did fifty years ago, and with just two actors playing all of the parts, Hare has created a fascinating landscape of dream and longing which seems both eternal and bang-up-to-date.

After opening to sometimes bewildered reviews at the National Theatre in 1978, David Hare's wildly ambitious play Plenty established itself as a landmark modern classic in its 1982 New York production, which transferred to Broadway with Kate Nelligan playing Susan Traherne. Counterpointing the experiences of a fiercely intelligent Englishwoman flown into France as a secret agent during the Second World War with her life in the following twenty years, David Hare offers a unique view of post-war history, as well as making a powerful statement about changing values and the collapse of ideals embodied in a single life. 'The richest, certainly the most resonant experience of my theatrical year.' Clive Barnes, Sunday Times 'An explosive theatrical version of a world that was won and lost during and after World War II.' Frank Rich, New York Times Plenty was made into a film from a screenplay by David Hare with Meryl Streep, Charles Dance and John Gielgud. Plenty returned to The Public, New York, in October 2016 with Susan Traherne played by Rachel Weisz.

In vividly dramatic form, this play tells how a remote Chinese village comes to terms with Communism. Every revolution creates new words. The Chinese revolution created a whole new vocabulary in which a very important word is "fanshen" which literally means "to turn the body" or "to turn over." To hundreds of millions of landless and poor peasants it means to stand up, throw off the landlords' yoke, and gain land, stock, and houses. Moreover it means to enter a new world and this play is the story of how the peasants of Long Bow build a new world.2 women, 7 men

Should I run? This is the question Pauline Gibson is asking herself. She has spent her adult life as a doctor, the inspiring leader of a campaign for local health provision. When she crosses paths with her old boyfriend, Jack Gould, who has made his way in Labour party politics, she's faced with an agonising decision. What's involved in sacrificing your private life and your peace of mind for something more than a single issue? Does she dare? David Hare was recently described by the Washington Post as 'the premiere political dramatist writing in English.' His explosive new play portrays the history of a twenty year intimate friendship and its public repercussions. David Hare's new play I'm not Running, premieres at the National Theatre, London, in October 2018.

In 1975, David Hare co-founded the Joint Stock Theatre Company, for whom he adapted Fanshen, William Hinton's book on the Chinese Revolution. Like most of Hare's political plays, Fanshen refuses to simplify complex moral issues. Focusing on the difficulties, mistakes, and corruptions of the revolution, Hare ultimately implies that those involved can learn from their mistakes and perhaps even move towards a more ideal society. After 1975, Hare began to write for the National Theatre which produced A Map of the World, which takes its title from Oscar Wilde's observation that "A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at," contrasts the cynicism of a successful novelist with an aggressive and idealistic young journalist. In Saigon, Barbara, a British woman, is a clerk at a bank in Saigon. She meets a CIA operative and the two fall in love just before the Vietcong take over the city.This unique wartime romance gives an unusual perspective of war from two Westerners ostensibly on the outside, but tied to the money and power which drives the war.

Also included in this volume are The Bay at Nice, which premiered at the National in 1986 and The Secret Rapture, which tells the story of two sisters coping with their father's death.

Drama starring Ralph Fiennes and Kate Winslet (in a BAFTA, Golden Globe and Oscar-winning performance), based on the novel by Bernard Schlink. Set in post World War II Germany, the story revolves around a teenage boy Michael Berg (David Kross) who falls ill with scarlet fever and is helped home by Hanna (Winslet), a stranger twice his age. When Michael recovers, he tracks Hanna down in order to thank her for her kindness. Despite their age difference, the two embark on an intense and secret affair that is based largely on Michael reading aloud to Hanna, until Hanna suddenly and mysteriously disappears one day, leaving Michael confused and heartbroken. Several years later, when Michael (Fiennes) is a law student observing the Nazi war crime trials, he comes across Hanna again - this time as a defendant in the courtroom. As Hanna's past is revealed, Michael uncovers a secret that profoundly affects both their lives.

The third winner of the Yale Drama Series competition for emerging playwrights-a haunting and provocative imagining of the reunion, years later, of a Guantanamo detainee and the female interrogator who tortured him It's been fifteen years since Guantanamo, fifteen years since Bashir last saw his U.S. Army interrogator, Alice. Bashir is now dying of a disease of the liver, an organ that he believes is the home of the soul. He tracks down Alice in Texas and demands that she donate half her liver as restitution for the damage wrought during her interrogations. But Alice doesn't remember Bashir; a PTSD pill trial she participated in while in the army has left her without any memory of her time there. It is only when her inquisitive fourteen-year-old daughter begins her own investigation that the fragile peace of mind that Alice's drug-induced oblivion enabled begins to falter. Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's powerful drama asks important and difficult questions: Is guilt a necessary form of moral reckoning, or is it an obstacle to be overcome? Will the price of our national political amnesia be paid only by the next generation-the daughters and sons who were never there? Upon awarding the prize, David Hare wrote, "We admired the play because-although it was stylishly written, although the governing metaphor and basic realism were held in a fine balance-it also recalled the political urgency which had propelled a previous generation of writers into the theatre in the first place."

'This happened on December 30, 2003. That may seem a while ago but it won't when it happens to you...' In this adaptation of her award-winning, bestselling memoir, Joan Didion transforms the story of the sudden and unexpected loss of her husband and their only daughter into a stunning and powerful one-woman play. The first production of 'The Year of Magical Thinking', starring Vanessa Redgrave and directed by David Hare, was a runaway hit on Broadway in 2007. The same production is transferring to the National Theatre from April to July 2008.