SOURCE: “London in Love,” in New Yorker, July 21, 1997, pp. 78-9.

In the following review, Lahr praises Amy's View.

This summer, the English have seen two well-managed changings of the guard: the British withdrawal from Hong Kong and Sir Richard Eyre’s exodus as director of the Royal National Theatre. The fireworks Eyre has provided for his departure after his masterly nine-year stewardship include a revival of his first Royal National hit, Guys and Dolls, Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love, opening in October, and David Hare’s new smash, Amy’s View, at the Lyttleton, which also ends Hare’s more than twenty-five-year association with that theatre. In this work, Hare forgoes his theatrical habit of making his characters speak for England and instead lets them speak for themselves. The play charts the struggle for separation between a famous actress, Esme Allen (the incomparable Judi Dench), and...