A Glorious Lesson in Acting, If Not Necessarily in Writing

In “Via Dolorosa,” the daring David Hare monologue currently at the Booth Theatre, the prolific English playwright tells audiences that the subject of his recent work has been “faith.” In “Amy’s View,” the acclaimed Hare tragicomedy that joined him a few blocks away at the Barrymore Theatre on Thursday, the object of that faith is the theater.

And it’s hard to imagine a more inspirational vessel for that faith than Judi Dench, the bewitching, bedazzling English stage legend who is on Broadway for the first time since she was a gifted newcomer with the Old Vic some 40 unfathomable years ago. Ironically, thanks to the impact of film--that newfangled menace that Hare views with such contempt in his strangely diffuse new play--one of London’s most celebrated actresses is suddenly a hot-ticket American draw.

How apt that, in “Amy’s View,” she plays Esme, an aging, extremely actressy West End actress--and mother of Amy--whose resilience is battered by a world overtaken by artistic, financial and philosophical change. What she has left, as we see in a final blazing flash of grease-painted revelation in Richard Eyre’s definitive production, is the theater.

How apt, yes. But, through no fault of her own, also how disappointing. Dench is marvelous in a role that cleverly addresses the art of her craft as she demonstrates it. It is Hare, strangely enough, who is not at the top of his form here. This distinguished playwright of conscience--also recently represented on Broadway by Nicole Kidman’s backside in “The Blue Room” and Liam Neeson’s Oscar Wilde in “The Judas Kiss”--is finally getting the showcase he deserved in such soul-scorching works as “Plenty” and “Racing De2mon.” But only “Via Dolorosa,” in which he stands alone onstage and talks about the Middle East, lives up to his best.

“Amy’s View,” which had a major success at the Royal National Theatre and then on the West End, turns out to be one of those plays that does not travel well. This is a surprise.

Hare’s concerns here, aside from his endorsement of the pure, self-affirming exhilaration of the theatrical moment, come out in scattershot bursts about mothers and daughters, the difficulty of “taking control” of one’s life, the evils of journalism, the particular evils of arts criticism, the scarcity of women’s roles (except in Hare’s plays), the triumph of cinematic images--especially exploding skulls--over the precious theatrical word, the nature-nurture ramifications of being an orphan, the plundering of the individual by big business, the exploitation of complicitous women by demon men, and the transformation of England’s “country thatched cottage heritage” into a theme park.

Oh, yes, Hare is also pondering the limitations of love. In Amy’s view, love conquers all. In Hare’s view, it seems only the theater can do that. He begins his play with a giddily virtuosic pose, that this is to be a country-house boulevard comedy in the manner of Noel Coward’s “Hay Fever,” in which a daughter brings her suitor home to meet the actress mom. Bob Crowley, whose designs never fail to amaze, puts us in a deceptively basic, wide rectangular sitting-room set in which only the slipcovers change through the years.

Amy is played with a rigorous mix of strength and insecurity by Samantha Bond, but Hare doesn’t make it easy for us to sympathize with her “everyone should try to get on and be kind” ethos. Dominic, the critic and would-be filmmaker she brings home, is a loathsome straw-man representative of everything Hare despises. Despite Tate Donovan’s effort to make the character human--much less a little sympathetic--we cannot feel anything for Amy when she attacks her mother for “never seeing the man I love.”

Anne Pitoniak (the original mother in “ ‘night, Mother”) is deeply effective as the widow Esme’s increasingly insensate mother-in-law. She, unlike Dench’s Esme, visibly ages over time. But the play’s chronological span, from 1979-1995, seems arbitrary in most other ways. Also, though Ronald Pickup is touchingly paradoxical as Esme’s devoted suitor and destructive financial advisor, Esme’s catastrophe--an investor crisis at Lloyd’s--seems far too remote from here.

But there is nothing remote about Dench, a short but formidable presence with eyes that defy the softness in her face and the flamboyant physical comfort that only comes with supreme confidence. Her Esme is impulsive, tough, infuriatingly self-involved--until she talks about acting. “I’m best playing genteel with something interesting happening underneath,” Esme says as Dench shows exactly how it’s done. “The basic skill in my profession,” she explains, almost winking, is that “you say one thing but you think the other.” Acting lessons don’t come better than this.

* “Amy’s View,” Barrymore Theatre, 243 W. 47th St., New York. Telecharge: (800) 432-7250.