The Vertical Hour Reviews — Page 2

Newsday is Negative:

"Oh, dear.

David Hare, celebrated British playwright of conscience, has created some of the most complex, intelligent, fascinating female characters in the modern theater.

Julianne Moore, luminous American actress and connoisseur's star, has embodied comparably intriguing women in independent and commercial films. Director Sam Mendes, founder of London's cutting-edge Donmar Warehouse, toughed "Cabaret" into a new Broadway classic and won an Oscar for his Hollywood movie "American Beauty."

To compound the promise, producers of "The Vertical Hour" dared to do what few today imagine: They opened the world premiere of a play of ideas on Broadway, without prevalidation in London or nonprofit theaters.

So much for splendid credentials and intentions.

Moore's Broadway debut - and first New York stage appearance in 14 years - is a crushing disappointment. She knows the lines but has no character. We cannot be absolutely certain, but we suspect that, even with a seasoned theater actress at the center, Mendes' production and Hare's drama would still be diffuse, didactic and unpersuasive.

With Moore as a void in the middle of at least three overlapping triangles about up-to-the-moment international politics, love and the ethics of a well-lived existence, the thing is a mess."


http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/stage/ny-ledesing4995481dec01,0,5100515.story?coll=ny-theater-headlines

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NY Sun is Mixed-to-Negative:

"Picture those op-ed pieces expanded into a full-length vehicle for a film star with rusty stage chops, and you have a pretty good sense of "The Vertical Hour," the author's ponderous follow-up to "Stuff Happens." The war is still very much on Mr. Hare's mind, but this time he addresses it in a lead-footed parable in which American exceptionalism runs smack into British world-weariness, leaving everyone weepy and chagrined.

It's the kind of play in which the characters hint at devastating experiences that they'd rather not talk about in Act I, then talk about them in Act II. Tears are shed. Lessons are learned. And on the other side of the footlights, eyes are rolled. Not even an enormously confident performance by the cagey Bill Nighy can rescue Mr. Hare or, sadly, leading lady Julianne Moore, from the quagmire of pop-psychology bromides and potted "Crossfire" chat.

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Mr. Nighy gets most of the juiciest lines, but proves equally dexterous with seemingly innocuous bits of dialogue. (The way he splits the word "fitness" into two equally contemptible syllables while discussing Philip's job is priceless.) He and Mr. Scott have also been given a handful of compelling father-son scenes, as Philip struggles to decipher Oliver's blend of heartfelt advice and emotional sabotage.

And Ms. Moore? Well, she comes off better than Julia Roberts, Puff Daddy, or several other celebrities who have run aground on Broadway in recent years. She listens well, for one thing, conveying a plausible blend of empathy and skepticism — it's easy to picture Nadia as a successful reporter. But a lengthy drunk scene is unconvincing, and her occasional snippets of humor fall flat. Most surprising is her inability to convey the psychological scars she incurred while reporting from Bosnia. In works from "The End of the Affair" to "The Hours" to the underrated "Safe," Ms. Moore suffers as persuasively as anyone in film, but the sense of trauma presumably lurking just under Nadia's composed surface remains untapped."
http://www.nysun.com/article/44477

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NY Daily News by Joe Dziemianowicz

Very Positive

Moore's 'Hour' of power

In a brilliant B'way debut, she shines as Hare's heroine

Just what Hare, or more specifically, his heroine Nadia (Julianne Moore, in her Broadway debut) has to say in this thoughtful, often exhilarating and beautifully staged production may surprise you - like, that the invasion of Iraq was a noble and justified attempt to alleviate human suffering.

The Iraq debate, however, isn't the real focus. It underscores a personal triangle - Nadia, her boyfriend, Philip, and his estranged father, Oliver - all wounded, and all on the lam from something or someone.

The majority of the play takes place in the garden of a home in Shropshire, a rural county in England near the Welsh border, which designers Scott Pask (sets) and Brian MacDevitt (lights) have rendered handsomely. Physical therapist Philip (Andrew Scott) brings Nadia home to meet Oliver (Bill Nighy), a physician with strong criticisms of the war in Iraq, as well as for his son, his son's career and his son's girlfriend. The meeting sparks thorny confrontations and painful confessions.

Helping her achieve all this is a fantastic cast. English actor Nighy, famous recently as the squid-faced villain in "The Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" - is fascinating from start to finish. He plays the cynical and caustic Oliver with so many body-language quirks, so much intelligence and sly humor that it's almost impossible to tear your gaze from him.

But it is Scott, an Irish import, as Philip, who is the find here. He leaps to the top of my list of "Actors whose work I don't know but now have to." He is magnetic playing a young expat enthralled by Nadia, yet fearful his womanizing father will ruin their relationship, just as he wrecked his mother's life.

Although they make only brief appearances, Dan Bittner and Rutina Wesley (playing Nadia's students) leave lasting impressions.

Sam Mendes, director of the Oscar-winning film "American Beauty" and Broadway's "Blue Room" and "Cabaret," guides the play smoothly. The fading in and out between scenes lends a cinematic feel, but Mendes mostly keep things simple.

So much, in fact, that I forgive Hare's thud of a conclusion, which would be remiss of me to reveal here. It comes well after Nadia's explanation of the title, that "in combat medicine, there's this moment after a disaster, the vertical hour, when you can actually be of some use."

If only someone could have intervened during the vertical hour when Hare wrote the curtain line.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/theater/story/476008p-400434c.html

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