![]() I put The Vertical Hour on my ‘back burner,’ but I also recognized that, as a play of ideas and rich dialogue, it might be well-suited for one of my Reader’s Theatre productions. ![]() I realized that the play’s appeal was going to be with audiences wanting to be challenged with ideas, and the theatre needed, at that time, to focus more on the inspiring and entertaining, as we were in the process of moving to a new venue with a lot of new expenses. The question was, could I persuade the Soulstice Board to take on a production.Īfter I had read the play thoroughly, I suggested it in Board Meetings, but the next few seasons had already been shaped, and The Vertical Hour was not going to fit in with seasonal themes. Plus, I had lived in the UK for a couple of years, and also really admire Bill Nighy and Julianne Moore. An English teacher and an employee of Yale University at the time of political protests against the Vietnam War, I could easily relate to the tension between the hopeful journalist/professor Nadia Blye, teaching at Yale, and the cynical, inquisitive Oliver Lucas. As character Nadia Blye remarks early on, ‘Politics is about the reconciliation of the irreconcilable.’ And for much of the play, its characters are unable to reconcile their past actions with their present lives, and they see the unintended consequences, political and personal, of retreating from the truth.ĭiscovering the play in the drama section of a Milwaukee bookstore, just months after its Broadway production had closed in 2007, I was struck with the timeliness and urgency of the dialogue and drawn to its flawed characters. Francis, WI to the play.Īnd in some ways, the political tensions in the air and the unresolved problems in Iraq and Syria, still seemed to call out for a play featuring characters involved in political discussions who were simultaneously struggling to come to terms with their intentions – past and present - with the mysteries of their own motives, with the imbalances between their thinking, feeling and willing. It is that intensity at the intersection of personal and political lives that first attracted me, an erstwhile producer/director/actor for Soulstice Theatre of St. This is not news to the rest of the world, however, and David Hare’s The Vertical Hour takes on the challenge of having an international political discussion within a family – and a potential couple – with all members already bearing a load of emotional baggage of secrets, guilt, and harrowing experiences. Political topics, like religious ones, can divide families, as nearly everyone in the US now recognizes.
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