Vertical Hour - It's A Jolly Holiday With Nighy....Everything Else? Not So Much.

The Vertical Hour is perhaps one of the most disappointing things I've seen in a long time. Just another example to show that pedigree - in this case, Julianne Moore, Bill Nighy, David Hare, Sam Mendes - does not a good show make. The nearly full audience, most of them older liberals with no idea of the play's subject matter, ate up the liberal/conservative themes. It was the perfect show to see the day after the State of the Union address, and they bore very striking similarities.

Both the SotU and Vertical Hour told us of things we already know. There was nothing original in Dubya's speech, there was little originality in Hare's play. The liberal/conservative debate has been done to death before, here the only difference is that a woman has the "pro-liberation" stand-point and the man takes the "you invaded" road.

Julianne Moore seemed miscast. She wasn't strong enough to carry the show the way she has to, yet she wasn't as bad as the papers made her out to seem. A screamer, she isn't. I couldn't help but imagine Patricia Heaton in the part. She has the needed sarcastic tone of voice that Moore lacks.

Andrew Scott is a sure-fire Tony nominee as the conflicted boyfriend (or was it a fiancee....I don't think they made it clear). Dan Bittner and Crystal Noelle (subbing for Rutina Wesley) were very good in their 10 minute scenes.

Bill Nighy proves once again why he is one of the finest actors of the time. His twitchy movements to punctuate the dialogue was perfect. He makes a great example of a perfectly nuanced and 100% fully realized character. If the competition wasn't so stiff, the Tony could be his. He is surely guaranteed a nomination.

The technical aspects were good, nothing outstanding.

Overall, a very disappointing afternoon but, hey, you win some, you lose some.

I wasn't referring to projection problems - you could hear her very well (she was one of the few who didn't swallow words)....but she just didn't seem very forceful to me. Hey, to each his/her own.

Shut up! I was there this afternoon as well. I swear I was the only one non-caucasian/under 30 in the crowd...

Generally I agree with you. I was just frustrated because whenever I wanted to get deeper into the relationship between the three, they threw the politics in. And vice versa. I never really felt the balance was right, and it also felt a little long - I could tell the audience was getting really bored towards the end of the show.

Moore get more intersting towards the end of act one, when she had a little meat to work with, but she never really feels like the right fit with the role. While I loved the connection between Andrew Scott and Bill Nighy, I never felt a real connection between Moore and either gent. Again, it could be because of the material, which never really serves her well, but even so, she comes off extremely flat as the show begin with, and against the powerful Nighy and the quietly intense Scott, she's out of her league.

Of course, I spent the latter half of act two watching the actors step around and try work with a broken wine glass, scary with Moore and Scott barefoot, and Nighy slipping on the wine.

Maybe Moore was saving herself for the rest of the play, but I had a real problem hearing her for the first half.

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