Hare, David

Hare, David (1947– ), English playwright, who in 1968 co-founded the Portable Theatre, a travelling Fringe group. He became literary manager (1969–70) and resident dramatist (1970–1) at the Royal Court Theatre, where his play Slag (London and NY, 1971), about three mistresses in a girls' school, was presented. Brassneck, written in collaboration with Howard Brenton, was first produced at the Nottingham Playhouse in 1973 while Hare was resident dramatist. It covers three generations of an unscrupulous Midlands family, highlighting its commercial and political corruption. Knuckle (1974; NY, 1975) uses a conventional thriller format to make another attack on capitalist corruption. In 1974 Hare became co-founder of another Fringe company, Joint Stock, which in the following year presented Fanshen, his adaptation of a book about the Chinese revolution. Teeth ‘n’ Smiles (Royal Court, 1975; NY, 1979) starred Helen Mirren in London as the drunken lead singer of a disintegrating rock group. His later plays were staged by the National Theatre, beginning with Plenty (1978; NY, 1982), in which an intelligent and honest woman seeks in the post-war world for an outlet for her wartime idealism. Later came A Map of the World (1983; NY, 1985), a debate between a left-wing journalist and a right-wing Indian novelist against the background of a UNESCO conference; and Pravda (1985), again with Brenton, a satirical portrait of a South African-born Press tycoon. After a double bill, The Bay at Nice and Wrecked Eggs (1986; NY, 1987), he produced his most lauded works, The Secret Rapture (1988; NY, 1989), a study of two contrasting sisters, a graphic designer and a Tory politician, in the aftermath of their father's death; and Racing Demon (1990), set in a South London parish, an examination of conflicting contemporary attitudes in the Church of England. In Murmuring Judges (1991) he scrutinizes the law. He has also directed several of his own and other people's plays.