David Hare Plays 2

This second volume of plays by David Hare contains work from the 1970s and 1980s which confirmed him as one of the major contemporary playwrights in the English language. It includes Fanshen, his remarkable 1975 play which focused on the Chinese Revolution with Brechtian subtlety, his screenplay for Saigon: Year of the Cat, The Secret Rapture, his biting portrait of a family in crisis, and the plays A Map of the World and The Bay at Nice. The collection is introduced by the author.

This play ran at the National Theatre, London, throughout 1978 and the New York production in the autumn of 1982 was equally well received. In counterpointing the experiences of an Englishwoman helping the French Resistance during the war with her life in the following twenty years, the author offers a unique view of postwar history, as well as making a powerful statement about changing values and the collapse of ideals embodied in a single life. Plenty is also a major film produced by Edward R. Pressman and Joseph Papp with Mark Seiler as Executive Producer, and directed by Fred Schepisi from a screenplay by David Hare. The cast, headed by double Oscar-winner Meryl Streep, includes Charles Dance, Tracy Ullman, John Gielgud, Sting, Ian McKellen and Sam Neill.

Skylight premiered at the National Theatre in 1995 and then went on to become one of the most internationally successful plays of recent years. This is the definitive edition of Skylight.

This book is about coincidents that have happened in my life that affected the American public, from cities being changed forever once we left to important buildings being raised. These are just a few incidents that can be remembered. Sayings such as “rip off” or “under the bus” are identified and repeated often publicly. Somehow, songs of the fifties could be traced to my experiences.

It is 1979. Esme Allen is a well-known West End actress at just the moment when the West End is ceasing to offer actors a regular way of life. The visit of her young daughter, Amy, with a new boyfriend sets in train a series of events which only find their shape eighteen years later. A generational play about the long term struggle between a strong mother and her loving daughter, Amy's View mixes love, death and the theatre in a way which is both heady and original.

Introduced by the author, this second volume contains work from the seventies and eighties which confirmed David Hare as 'one of the few major playwrights in our language' (New York Post).

An elderly antiquarian bookseller has just died at his home in the country. His two daughters come to attend to things. Isobel, who has been nursing him, is a partner in a small design firm. Marion is in politics - already a junior minister. It is Marion's profession to provide answers, and to back those who offer solutions, but not all human situations yield to a professional approach - least of all when they involve their junior step-mother Katherine. In this elegantly constructed play, a mordant comedy of manners deepens into a painfully unsparing examination of the consequences of applying principled pragmatism to human feelings. 'David Hare has written one of the best English plays since the war and established himself as the finest British dramatist of his generation.' John Peter, Sunday Times

Oscar Wilde's philosophy leads him on a path to destruction. The Judas Kiss describes two pivotal moments: the day Wilde decides to stay in England and face imprisonment, and the night when the lover for whom he risked everything betrays him. With a burning sense of outrage, David Hare presents the consequences of an uncompromisingly moral position in a world defined by fear and conformity. Originally produced in the West End and on Broadway, this new edition coincides with a 2012 revival. 'Superbly written... Hare has taken a history and pieced it together with heroic grace... Vastly rich, sophisticated and heartbreaking.' Time Out, New York