Feature Review: David Hare | The Breath of Life | Theatro Technis | Gaza Strip

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Published: 23 April 2009

Breath of Life another side of Hare

SIR David Hare is perhaps best known now for his urgent political theatre addressing the tangled webs of the Gaza Strip or the Iraq War.
Increasingly, he has become an impassioned and, in a climate of growing media caution, an important commentator on the controversies and injustices of our age – who just happens to be one of country’s leading playwrights.
But the author, who lives in Hampstead with his second wife, the fashion designer Nichole Farhi, was not always like this.
The Breath of Life, Hare’s 2002 play on at the Theatro Technis this week, is notably bereft of any political murmurings. Two women in their sixties, Frances and Madeleine, are forced to revisit their pasts when the man they both loved and shared, the unseen Martin, elopes to Seattle with a young American woman.
First performed at the Theatre Royal with Judi Dench and Maggie Smith, the play asks if people must be defined forever by their past or if they can face up to it and, in doing so, break free from it.
A Q&A session with director, cast and crew follows the performance tonight (Thursday).

•The Breath of Life by David Hare is at Theatro Technis, Mornington Crescent, NW1, until April 25, 7.45pm and Sat mat 3pm. Box office: 020 7353 1700.

SIMON WROE

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