Customer Reviews

Amy's View: A Play

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David Hare's Amy's View is a startling new play. Rich, funny, sad, absurd, and thought-provoking, Amy's View leaves the reader or audience member clamoring for more. Hare presents fascinating characters in Esme Allen, a famous West End actress; her daughter Amy, who's famous "view" is that love conquers all; her boyfriend and soon to be husband Dominic, a cultural monolith; and Frank, a devoted companion of Esme's who's actions have devastating consequences in all of their lives. This play meshes love and betrayal with the question of whether the theatre is relevant in society anymore. The reader will be astonished. But being lucky enough to see this play performed on Broadway with Judi Dench as Esme, I love this play that much more.

Hare refers to the chamber pieces written after his monumental trilogy as "Jim and Tim" plays--theatre with few techincal marvels, conflicts based on personal relationships and not external struggles, and, most importantly, a sense of character specificity not found in the archetypes of Susan Traherne and Isobel Glass. "Amy's View" is his second of these smaller plays, and it is the best of the three he has written so far.

As in his first Jim and Tim play, "Skylight", the characters are not politicians and public figures but ordinary Britons with neighbors, lovers and family. But unlike "Skylight", which examined only one theme, "Amy's View" uses its smallness to raise big issues. The piece is a play about grief and happiness, familial relations, and the price of compassion. It's about the role of the theatre, both as an artform and in modern life. It's about having money and not wanting it, wanting money and not having it, and the ultimate inability to know your life.

And, of course, the play resonates with Hare's exquisite dialogue, making "Amy's View" a masterpiece of langauge and well as of stagecraft. It is without question Hare's greatest chamber play, and in parts it even reaches the heights of his two seminal works, "Plenty" and "The Secret Rapture".

David Hare's play is a wonderful look at relationships against the back drop of the 1980s and 1990s London art scene. The tensions of Mother-Daughter relationships forms the core of this play. Other family relationships crackle with the same intensity leaping off the page. The role of Esme is one of the few excellent female lead roles available today - strong, vibrant, sharp tongued and opinionated Esme showcases the broad spectrum of emotions women have between themselves, their children, in-laws, lovers and coworkers.

This book is a terrific reminder of an excellent theater production, reading it won't spoil the play a bit!

David Hare gives us yet another unforgettable character in Esme Allen. She reminds us that we must hold on to our ideals bravely as we could be stripped of them at anytime. A great play.