Stuff happens... And it's untidy, and freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.'The famous response of Donald Rumsfeld, American Secretary of Defense, to the looting of Baghdad, at a press conference on 11 April 2003, provides the title for a new play, specially written for the Olivier Theatre, about the extraordinary process leading up to the invasion of Iraq.How does the world settle its differences, now ther...

The press and politicians. A delicate relationship. Too close, and danger ensues. Too far apart, and democracy itself cannot function.Pravda (which means "truth") is a satire written at the height of Thatcherism when huge political changes were afoot. The play essentially studies, through black humour and close scrutiny, the tabloid ethic and the media industry as a get-rich-quick-fix.In the programme for the original 1985 production of Pravda, Br...

People arguing, that isn't theatre. People making points. And what's more, you and I don't belong in drawing rooms. Drawing rooms can't contain us. We need courts and palaces and cathedrals. There's scale for us there. We can move our elbows. Little rooms give us no space.Henry Irving believes that theatre is the only thing that matters. Ellen Terry believes it's more important to be a decent human being. Ellen's daughter Edith Craig believes theatre can change society, bu...

Covid-19 seems to be a sort of dirty bomb, thrown into the body to cause havoc.On the same day that the UK government finally made the first of two decisive interventions that led to a conspicuously late lockdown, David Hare contracted Covid-19. Nobody seemed to know much about it then, and many doctors are not altogether sure they know much more today. Suffering a pageant of apparently random symptoms, Hare recalls the delirium of his illness, which mixed with fear, dream...

From his early days as a playwright, David Hare has moved deliberately between stage, film and television, over the years building up a repertoire of work, most of which seeks to capture the changing feelings of contemporary life. Now, for the first time, some of Hare's best, and most characteristic, screenplays are collected together in a single volume, confirming his status as one of Britain's most passionate and versatile writers of fiction.This volume also contains an illuminat...

'I want to give my country a model of perfection... Nothing less. My country needs cheering up. I'm the man to do it.'Nobody can doubt John Christie's passion nor his formidable will: his wooing of his opera singer wife has been marked by 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 an ambitious project: the construction of an Opera House on h...

“Extraordinary. . . . This is no butterfly-watching stroll through a life.” —Dwight Garner, New York TimesDavid Hare has long been one of Britain’s best-known screenwriters and dramatists. He’s the author of more than thirty acclaimed plays that have appeared on Broadway, in the West End, and at the National Theatre. He wrote the screenplays for the hugely successful films The Hours, Plenty, and The Reader. Most recently, his pla...

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...

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, campai...

Nothing is more important to a modern political party than fund-raising. But the values of the donors can't always coincide with the professed beliefs of the party. And family scandal within the cabinet has the potential to throw both the money-raisers and the money-spenders into chaos.This richly imagined ensemble play about British public life looks at the way business, media and politics are now intertwined to nobody's advantage, as, in an unforgiving world, one character after ...

'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...

In 1997 the 50-year-old playwright David Hare decided to visit the 50-year-old state of Israel and write a play - Via Dolorosa - about the conflict. He then chose to become the actor of his own play and set about learning to act the monologue for an uninterrupted 95 minutes on stage. Acting Up is a diary of the ups and downs of that learning curve as well as an insight into what it is actors, directors, producers and stage staff actually do in rehearsals. Hare's hilarious...