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David Hare is a political playwright with artistic instincts, and in "The Vertical Hour" he gives them the upper hand... Julianne Moore plays Nadia Blye, a liberal professor who backed the war but now has doubts, and her performance is just right: simple, unmannered, even a bit naïve. Bill Nighy, by contrast, is sensationally mannered as Oliver Lucas, the ravaged, self-hating Brit who serves as Mr. Hare's mouthpiece -- he flops around the stage like a middle-aged rubber band -- but he's so charismatic that it doesn't matter. The juxtaposition of American innocence with European experience is an over-obvious device, but Mr. Hare manages to make it work until the very last scene, a What-It-All-Means coda blatant enough to have been lifted from a Neil LaBute play.
Sam Mendes's staging is as lucid and lovely as Ms. Moore's acting, and Scott Pask has come up with a pleasingly Chekhov-like outdoor setting for the climactic confrontation between Nadia and Oliver. The supporting cast is excellent. I wish Mr. Hare would cut that last scene -- he's too good a writer to spell out things that are better left unsaid -- but even as is, "The Vertical Hour" is a superior piece of work.
From a review in the WSJ by Terry Teachout
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