The History Plays: Knuckle / Licking Hitler / Plenty

The History Plays #1-3

by David Hare

Three plays look at capitalism in Great Britain, propaganda efforts against Hitler, and a wartime agent's inability to adjust to peacetime life

Genres: Plays

207 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1986

About the author

Sir 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...

Reviews

[Shabbeer Hassan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Its a collection of three plays and it would only be fair to review them one at a time. So here it is:

Knuckle
A thoroughly unsatisfying and at times misogynistic play! David Hare, you could do better.

Licking Hitler
Pathetic, weak, misogynistic and patriarchial play! One reads this and then has to wash their mouth to get the bad taste out.

Plenty
Ahh what to say about this one - boring characters, a terrible protagonist and weak plotline. And sad to see Meryl Streep being wasted in the movie adaptation of this.

As you can see, the dominant theme of all three plays seems to be inherent misogyny amongst the characters, confusing narratives amongst the plot, and highly self-serving protagonists across all which don't have a story to tell despite all their shenanigans.

My Rating - 1.5/5

[Uncle Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are three plays here. Hard to rate them on the silly "stars" system as I rated Licking Hitler very highly but didn't enjoy the other two so much. LH is set in a British radio propaganda station during WW2. Of the other two, I found Plenty quite interesting and I'm making efforts to get hold of the film version. It's about one woman's enduring efforts to adapt to civilian life after serving as a spy in France in WW2.Knuckle is written in a murder mystery format and I think even David Hare has accepted it is well past its sell-by date.

I bought the book in a secondhand charity shop. I buy most of my stuff secondhand now.