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Slag
His first published play, a modern day updating of the Greek play Lysistrata in which women protest a male dominated culture by withholding their sexual favors.
- GenresPlays
77 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1971
About the author
David Hare
120 books84 followersSir David Hare (born 5 June 1947) is an English playwright, screenwriter and theatre and film director. Most notable for his stage work, Hare has also enjoyed great success with films, receiving two Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay for writing The Hours in 2002, based on the novel written by Michael Cunningham, and The Reader in 2008, based on the novel of the same name written by Bernhard Schlink.
On West End, he had his greatest success with the plays Plenty, which he adapted into a film starring Meryl Streep in 1985, Racing Demon (1990), Skylight (1997), and Amy's View (1998). The four plays ran on Broadway in 1982–83, 1996, 1998 and 1999 respectively, earning Hare three Tony Award nominations for Best Play for the first three and two Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play. Other notable projects on stage include A Map of the World, Pravda, Murmuring Judges, The Absence of War and The Vertical Hour. He wrote screenplays for the film Wetherby and the BBC drama Page Eight (2011).
As of 2013, Hare has received two Academy Award nominations, three Golden Globe Award nominations, three Tony Award nominations and has won a BAFTA Award, a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and two Laurence Olivier Awards. He has also been awarded several critics' awards such as the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and received the Golden Bear in 1985. He was knighted in 1998.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ha...
On West End, he had his greatest success with the plays Plenty, which he adapted into a film starring Meryl Streep in 1985, Racing Demon (1990), Skylight (1997), and Amy's View (1998). The four plays ran on Broadway in 1982–83, 1996, 1998 and 1999 respectively, earning Hare three Tony Award nominations for Best Play for the first three and two Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play. Other notable projects on stage include A Map of the World, Pravda, Murmuring Judges, The Absence of War and The Vertical Hour. He wrote screenplays for the film Wetherby and the BBC drama Page Eight (2011).
As of 2013, Hare has received two Academy Award nominations, three Golden Globe Award nominations, three Tony Award nominations and has won a BAFTA Award, a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and two Laurence Olivier Awards. He has also been awarded several critics' awards such as the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and received the Golden Bear in 1985. He was knighted in 1998.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ha...
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 26, 2024
A disappointing play with a great title!
July 15, 2025
Oh joy. A play about feminism written by a man, and it’s exactly what you’d expect.
I picked this up in a charity shop after being impressed with David Hare’s ‘Straight Line Crazy’, which I saw at the Bridge Theatre a few years ago, and hearing of his reputation as one of the greats of British theatre. Jumping from his latest play to his earliest seemed like a fun way to dive into his work, to see how the young man developed into the stalwart playwright.
All I can say is that he must have done a lot of developing in those intervening years.
Set at an all girls’ school, the loose narrative of the play concerns three teachers who swear a vow of sexual abstinence in the name of forming an all-female society independent of men.
Structured as a collection of absurdist conversations, Slag sees tense rivalries and opposing ideologies form on the battleground of what constitutes being a proper feminist - one character is a parody of ‘radical feminism’, one character is promiscuous, and one character illustrates more traditional ideas of femininity. There’s one crucial flaw with Hare’s writing though: all three do not feel like they’ve been observed by a woman. They feel like a man’s tabloid sketch of what he thinks a radical feminist movement looks like.
Occasionally there’s a funny line that shows an aptitude for dialogue, and the overall impression of a crumbling institution is a slightly interesting statement on the end of empire. But considering it was written in 1970, a watershed time for women fighting for equal pay and reproductive rights, it feels incredibly misjudged.
Like, Hare saw all those incredible women taking to the streets, and… this is what he took from it? Some snide gags about how they all can’t get along?
It would be easy to say this play has aged poorly, but then I’d like to give the theatre audiences of the 1970s a little more credit. I’d like to think that even then, there would be a sizeable group of people who would recognise that the rightful place for it was on the slag heap.
I picked this up in a charity shop after being impressed with David Hare’s ‘Straight Line Crazy’, which I saw at the Bridge Theatre a few years ago, and hearing of his reputation as one of the greats of British theatre. Jumping from his latest play to his earliest seemed like a fun way to dive into his work, to see how the young man developed into the stalwart playwright.
All I can say is that he must have done a lot of developing in those intervening years.
Set at an all girls’ school, the loose narrative of the play concerns three teachers who swear a vow of sexual abstinence in the name of forming an all-female society independent of men.
Structured as a collection of absurdist conversations, Slag sees tense rivalries and opposing ideologies form on the battleground of what constitutes being a proper feminist - one character is a parody of ‘radical feminism’, one character is promiscuous, and one character illustrates more traditional ideas of femininity. There’s one crucial flaw with Hare’s writing though: all three do not feel like they’ve been observed by a woman. They feel like a man’s tabloid sketch of what he thinks a radical feminist movement looks like.
Occasionally there’s a funny line that shows an aptitude for dialogue, and the overall impression of a crumbling institution is a slightly interesting statement on the end of empire. But considering it was written in 1970, a watershed time for women fighting for equal pay and reproductive rights, it feels incredibly misjudged.
Like, Hare saw all those incredible women taking to the streets, and… this is what he took from it? Some snide gags about how they all can’t get along?
It would be easy to say this play has aged poorly, but then I’d like to give the theatre audiences of the 1970s a little more credit. I’d like to think that even then, there would be a sizeable group of people who would recognise that the rightful place for it was on the slag heap.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews