No matter how extended the engagement, thanks to its two leads, David Hare's rather undistinguished two-hander could have played forever, judging by those crowded lines at the box office. (I got a day seat yet paid more for it than any play I'd ever attended in London.) Now The Breath of Life is headed for New York, minus Judi Dench. It figures: Maggie Smith has almost all the best lines. She plays art historian Madeleine, the seemingly self-sufficient owner of a "busy" art-and-book-filled home on the Isle of Wight. She proclaims it not yet gentrified but as far as she could get south, where everyone's coming to die.
After Frances Beale (beautifully tailored Dench, unashamedly gray) arrives, ostensibly to gather info for memoirs she's going to write, there's a snippy exchange. Frances' husband Martin, whom she found out not very long ago had been having a 25-year affair with Madeleine, has left them for a younger woman in Seattle. This gives author Hare a chance to get in lots of jibes against things American, particularly American playwrights. Yet disparagement rings truest in relation to British lawyer Martin, whom Madeleine first loved when they both worked in the Civil Rights movement in Alabama. She left, not wanting, she says, "to be defined by my need for that man." A fateful reunion occurred in London years later.
Meanwhile, Martin had met Frances in a garden (the new Eve after Lilith?), wed her, and started a family. The women hash out their differences: Madeleine created the excitement in Martin's life (e.g. taking him to orgies) that Frances wrote about. For Frances, the purpose of life was to find love; she considers raising children and keeping a home heroic. Madeleine thinks she tapped into Martin's need to do or be something important in a larger context, though he now cares more about self than social issues. What an inglorious end to revolution! His whole generation can boast in its obit: "We left no loft unconverted."
Can anyone project outright anger the way Smith does when her Madeleine disparages modern emphasis on feeling? "What would Jesus do?" she snarls.
Just as the shared sense of loss brings the women together, it is deepened by awareness of their ages and impending death. Madeleine thinks Martin regards youth as full of vision. Thus, his Seattle girl, who also represents America, is "an epic fuck!" Frances feels that wanting to hold on to youth was why Madeleine first left Martin. As Frances admits, however, that Martin had told her he needed Madeleine's strength, she gains more of her own. When Madeleine insists she "won't be used," Frances confesses to having come in distress and "using" her proposed book. No good "living in the past," Madeleine says, since "you always know what happens. He always leaves you."
So where does that leave the women? Is David Hare being hopeful or resigned with his conclusion, and is he applying it to himself as well as his characters? While he seems to be as blunt and anti-American as Madeleine, he's also written a play like Frances's pop novels. The women agree that their book is in their minds. So what's on Hare's, other than making some money (with a likely candidate for putting many a pair of underused good actresses on as many stages as possible)?
