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NEW YORK -- Anyone who saw Stuff Happens, David Hare's brilliant, scathing account of the lead-up to the war in Iraq, knows where the playwright stands on the Bush administration's foreign policy.
So it might surprise them, initially, that the heroine of Hare's The Vertical Hour (**1/2 out of four), which opened Thursday at Broadway's Music Box Theatre, is an American academic who staunchly supports the "liberation" of Saddam Hussein's stomping grounds.
Yale professor Nadia Blye isn't the kind of armchair neoconservative that Hare and other critics have taken to task. A former correspondent who covered the Balkan conflict in the '90s, Nadia has had her hands and soul dirtied in war zones; and her argument for U.S. interference in the Middle East rests less on a feeling of cultural supremacy than a compulsion to help the suffering and the oppressed. "It's so much easier to do nothing than something," she notes.
But Nadia finds her perspective challenged when she travels abroad to meet her British beau's father. Oliver, a divorced doctor living on the Welsh borders, has very different political and philosophical views. Still, even as they clash, these foils are drawn together.
The problem with this production, directed with a light, sure hand by Sam Mendes, is that the actors cast as Nadia and Oliver are not equals. Julianne Moore, the luminous leading lady known for her vibrant work in The Hours and many other films, isn't a stranger to the stage. But in this Broadway debut, she can seem strained and self-conscious.
In contrast, Bill Nighy's Oliver is thoroughly convincing and deliciously idiosyncratic. Walking with a slightly stooped gait and wearing an alternately amused and rueful expression, the stage veteran reveals his character's incorrigible, coarsely seductive exterior, his probing mind and, eventually, his aching heart. It's easy to see how this aging roue infuriates his son (charmingly played by Andrew Scott) and fascinates Nadia.
Two likable young actors, Dan Bittner and Rutina Wesley, also appear, as Nadia's students. Wesley's Terri declares in her paper that "there is only one truth: The powerful exploit the powerless. Indiscriminately."
"Despair's an affectation," Nadia tells Terri. "It's self-indulgence." Terri shoots back: "It's more like not fooling yourself." By suggesting the truth is more complicated than either woman maintains, The Vertical Hour takes us on a bracing, if not entirely smooth, ride.
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