Hare Gets The Hump Over US Cold Shoulder

In a newly published book, top playwright Sir David Hare claims he was snubbed and insulted by the New York theatre establishment earlier this year.

To UK theatregoers this may have seemed like Hare's best run of success ever - award-winning productions of Skylight, Amy's View and The Blue Room, plus his own acclaimed solo performance in Via Dolorosa - but any garlands he received at home were besmirched in Hare's eyes by the indifference with which his work was greeted across the Atlantic.

None of those shows previously mentioned received so much as a nomination in the Tony awards - a mystifying oversight in Hare's view.

In his new book, Acting Up, published last week by Faber & Faber, a diary of the period he spent performing Via Dolorosa at the Lincoln Center, he writes: 'It is an insult and I shall take it as such.'

During his high-profile 30-year career, David Hare has attracted - and sometimes created - controversy like no other playwright. An old-fashioned socialist, he championed John Major when it was least fashionable to do so. More recently he upset the Labour front bench with his outspoken views on the Government's arts policy.

Ten years ago, when the Broadway production of his play The Secret Rapture was savaged in the New York Times, he took the unprecedented step of publicly rebuking its critic, Frank Rich, provoking the classic Variety headline 'Ruffled Hare Airs Rich Bitch.'

His latest swipe at Broadway is rather more wide-ranging - and possibly damaging to his future Stateside prospects - since he not only blames the Lincoln Center Theatre for making him commit to eight shows a week, but he slams more than half the audience of a fund-raising gala.

His diary entry reads: 'I could feel the house split between the 300 rich bastards in the stalls, who were sitting in stony silence, and the 200 real people in the balcony who had paid normal prices. If the assembled men and women could donate to the Lincoln Center only half what they spend on reconstructive surgery and liposuction, then theatre in Manhattan would be reviltalised at a stroke.'

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