David Hare is better known as a playwright than as an actor. Yet in Via Dolorosa, Hare proves to be almost as at home reciting his own text as he is writing it. Hare's visits two years ago to Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip prompted him to set down on paper his memories and reactions to a wide mix of tempestuous people in this most turbulent of places. The goal seemed to be to put a personable and sensible spin on the baffling conflicts between Arabs and Jews. With the activist help of director Stephen Daldry, Hare's relative objectivity of the regional clashes, and his subjective questioning, "Are we where we live, or are we what we think?" become the meat of the play.
Although I cringe a little at designer Ian MacNeil's overly conceptualized setting of ramps and walkways (including a brief background appearance of a miniaturized view of Palestine all aglow), it's easy enough to give my attention to Hare's slyly investigative reportage. His 90-minute text is based on a series of interviews and meetings with a wide variety of people of an admittedly different way of life than his own. By using a good storyteller's gift for the occasional digression and diversion, the commendably personable and relaxed Hare tries valiantly to make sense of the causes. This, as he relates what he perceives as the prevailing effects of clashing politics and religions upon this land, this eternal battleground of alien cultures.
But dramatic interest and inquiry is conditioned and tested by the polite, only occasionally provocative meetings Hare has with some only-moderately-interesting activist Arabs, a few amusingly confrontational Jews, and a couple of typically intense theater people. An unintentionally humorous meeting with politicos, and a visit with family of stolid West Bank settlers are the most eye-opening.
As an investigative historian, Hare reports on the people who make it clear enough to him how the compromises of Rabin and the policies of Netanyahu may be going nowhere. But he sees this as nothing compared to the rigid ideas and inflexible ideologies that continue to separate secular and religious Jews.
Hare also gives voice to the Palestinians, who offer their dismay with Arafat's government. Yes, we have to agree with Hare that life here must be exceedingly difficult. As a travel guide, Hare takes us from the air-conditioned splendor of Tel Aviv to the disillusioning squalor of the Gaza Strip. And it is all so vivid -- without slides. The impact of this cross-cultural trip of just a few miles he compares to "driving from California to Bangladesh." For all that, Via Dolorosa comes off as a first-class dramatic lecture but a tourist-class play.
