David Hare is a smart cookie, a true intellectual. His Broadway play, The Vertical Hour, starring Julianne Moore and Bill Nighy, is basically his anti-war comment on Iraq. There is a lot of political instruction on terror and victims by an idealistic Moore, and a very mannered, twitchy Nighy gives us Britain contrasted to the U.S. politically. The question is: does one intervene where things are terrible? She justifies the start of the Iraq war; Nighy is anti.
The third major character is Moore's fiance, played by an ineffective Andrew Scott whose whining tenor flips into falsetto when excited, and is no match for Nighy playing his father. Thus the sexual tension between Moore and Nighy is foreshadowded early on.
Nighy, performing rather than acting, great with a sarcastic quip, and sometimes directly addressing the audience, is sometimes more engaging than the arguments. He looks a bit like Clint Eastwood, and costumer Ann Roth even puts him in a sarape in one scene. It made me chuckle.
We get Hare's take on doctors and psychotherapists too. The intellectual fol-de-rol is fun as Nighy crosses minds with Moore, who is quite effective as a formidable woman, a killer intellectual who is beautiful and sensuous.
There are some good jokes in the play, many insights, some of them humorous, and some academic arguments. Aside from the (for me) casting flaw, it is nicely directed by Sam Mendes, and has some gorgeous images by set designer Scott Pask and lighting designer Brian McDevitt. And Hare accomplishes a kind of theatrical miracle -- the big emotional grabber that I cannot forget, that gets me now, days later when I think of it, is the very last word of the play.
