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Alphabetical Order
Hampstead
David Hare, that marvellously sophisticated, dazzlingly eloquent and faintly ridiculous left-wing brahmin, has written a sequel to Via Dolorosa, his absorbing meditation on the woes of Israel. After the blithering drivel of Seven Jewish Children, Caryl Churchill’s impenetrably tedious response to Israel’s incursion into Gaza, the Royal Court has restored some sanity and intelligence to the debate. Hare’s specific subject is the 486-mile wall (or ‘Fence for Life’ as the Israelis call it) currently being built to keep out suicide bombers. Wall, according to the programme, was ‘directed by Stephen Daldry’. It’s hard to say exactly what ‘directing’ a one-man, one-hour recital might involve, but then we don’t know how much guidance Hare needed after the first run-through. ‘Dave, darling, lovely stuff, but the Shrek costume and the bunch of carnations between the teeth? Not really working. Do it in a shirt and a pair of trousers.’
Hare’s first problem, objectivity, he resolves as best he can by sharing his time equally between both sides and by looking for the good, the rational, the consensual, wherever possible. But he still can’t avoid the accusation of partiality. Some in the pro-Israel camp have objected that by returning to this turf rather than examining the disputed regions of, say, Tibet or Kashmir, he automatically betrays a degree of prejudice. Strange assumption there: scrutiny equals bias. It’s even stranger to imagine that Hare is some elevated, pure-minded sage. Hare is a music-hall turn who goes where the box office leads. Israel/Palestine attracts him because it passes the recognition test and tops the poll of the world’s most talked-about ethnic conflicts. And London has sizeable minorities of Jews and Arabs with both the inclination and the cash to hear his stand-up tragedy routines. How many Kashmiris would countenance catching a show in Sloane Square? How many Tibetans? Those calculations are not absent from the mind of the celebrity coroner when he plans his public autopsies.
Hare is an excellent traveller, pithy, wry, never remotely boring, and he’s self-assured enough to remain silent at times and let others do the talking. He quotes an Israeli intellectual who points out that while Israel may look aggressive and powerful, it still feels weak and provisional from within. Other countries blithely plan their future many years ahead. Israel finds this psychologically difficult. ‘Our being is not guaranteed.’ Another intellectual, the playwright Shaman Tamar, is alarmed at the withering away of Israel’s anti-war movement. ‘A country that loses its hippies is in deep trouble.’
Crossing into the West Bank, Hare notices a witty defacement stretching across six blocks of the wall: ‘CTL – ALT – DEL’. The indolent aggressiveness of the IDF troops at checkpoints disturbs him and he’s saddened to see that Israel has pioneered a form of tarmac apartheid. Two roads run in parallel. The Palestinians are confined to a pock-marked dirt-track, crammed with jack-knifed old bangers, while the Israelis ride in luxury on a shimmering ribbon of burnished asphalt virtually devoid of traffic. The show is crammed with fascinating, funny and poignant observations. One might quibble that it lacks a centre, a dramatic heart. The closing line ‘I want some gates in the wall’, is a dispiriting platitude, but the real problem with Wall, and I mean this as a tribute, is that it isn’t substantial enough. Even the cleverest boy in the class can’t get away with half an essay.
Talking of clever boys, Michael Frayn’s breakthrough play has been revived at Hampstead. The problem with Frayn the Brain is the brain of Frayn. It needs heavy doses of medication to curtail its wilder intricacies. But when he wrote Alphabetical Order back in 1975 he had a reputation to establish and he was on his best behaviour. The setting is the cuttings library of a provincial newspaper, and Frayn lays out the central conflict with clear-minded artistry. Giggly, disorganised librarian Lucy (Imogen Stubbs) comes into conflict with her methodical new assistant, Lesley (Chloe Newsome), who ruthlessly sets about imposing order on the library’s Byzantine filing system.
The play can be read in numerous ways, but today it feels eerily prophetic, like a pre-emptive strike against Thatcher four years before she reached Number 10. Christopher Luscombe’s crisply paced production is visually enchanting and often hilarious. Imogen Stubbs has found a role that perfectly suits her temperament. A dreamy, dippy, comedy sex-pot. And the pick of the cast, Jonathan Guy Lewis, exactly captures a certain type of roguish 1970s intellectual with his natty suits, collar-length hair, boyish swagger and a rambling cerebral Varsity manner that never feels faintly superior.
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