There will come a time when we won’t need to bother with the news. We’ll just tune in — or turn up to a theatre — to listen to David Hare’s thoughts on Iraq or the state of the Labour Government and go away suitably informed and chastened.
Here, Hare turns his formidable attention to the Israeli security fence, which will one day be four times as long as the Berlin Wall. That comparison is pertinent, as this monologue, delivered with gusto by the author, was conceived as a companion piece to his other recent solo offering, Berlin. In the latter, Hare looked at the expansiveness of a post-Wall world. Here, his subject is the narrowness of a society that is building a barrier to keep people out.
Hare has trodden dramatically in the Middle East before, with Via Dolorosa (1998). This time around, his focus is more precise: what sense of hopelessness could have induced a country to make its feelings of fear so literally concrete?
Galloping up the aisle onto the stage, Hare assures us that he has friends on both sides of the conflict and we’re off, for precision-drilled statistics and a dizzying tour of Israeli checkpoints and Palestinian humiliation.
The performance lasts 40 minutes, although this is positively Hamlet-like compared to the 10 that Caryl Churchill devoted to the entire history of Israel in Seven Jewish Children. In many trips to the region, Hare has listened, empathised, learned and processed this learning, and we do our best to absorb the results, which see him standing on stage and reading, at a great lick and with much charisma, from a script.
Yet because he has chosen to present this material theatrically, rather than, say, as an essay, I couldn’t help moments of distraction.
Why can’t director Stephen Daldry stop him moving his head at odd angles, like a tortoise with a crick in its neck? Wall’s closing, bitter irony brushes away such nonsenses: terrorists now prefer launching missiles to suicide-bombing, meaning that the barrier is obsolete before it’s even finished.
Until 25 April (020 7565 5000, www.royalcourttheatre.com).
Wall
Jerwood Theatre At The Royal Court
Sloane Square, SW1W 8AS
