SOURCE: “Playwright of Popular Dissent: David Hare and the Trilogy,” in David Hare: A Casebook, edited by Hersh Zeifman, Garland Publishing, 1994, pp. 217-35

In the following essay, Glenn provides an overview of the political themes, staging, and critical reception of Hare's trilogy—Racing Demon, Murmuring Judges, and The Absence of War.

As one of Britain’s most successful playwright-polemicists, David Hare has been lauded for his ability to attract largely mainstream, middle-class audiences to productions that often tear at the very fabric of bourgeois English life. For the last fifteen years he has been assisted in his efforts by the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain, where he is an associate director: since 1978, Hare has launched nine plays from the National’s three stages, including Plenty, A Map of the World, Pravda (written with Howard Brenton), The Bay at Nice and Wrecked Eggs, and The Secret Rapture. His...