In his 50th year, David Hare put himself in the spotlight by presenting the world with the purest and most concentrated expression of his beliefs as a playwright. Via Dolorosa, a monologue he wrote after visiting the Middle East in 1997, is his most direct piece of writing, and doubly resonant by virtue of the fact that he performs it himself. Watching it entices one to question what we know about Hare, and consider what he is asking of us as viewers.

Carrying on from where the Angry Young Men left off, Hare links the everyday frustrations of his characters with broader political injustices. His is a world where the most loathesome disease is apathy. In the savage Plenty, a woman whose one chance of fulfilment came in working for the French Resistance finally commits suicide rather than learn to love the complacent and petty chattering of the England she is forced to return to.
		Hare has brought compassion to a tempestuous subject

These neat microcosms first flourished with a classy batch of Play For Todays in the 1970s. Hare was given a budget to make a film, something he had no proven experience for. It was a gamble that paid off with the legendary Licking Hitler, a masterpiece that led him to even more dazzling film work, including another television play, the poignant Dreams of Leaving. Via Dolorosa, ironically for a monologue, is the play that comes closest to Hare's films in terms of the bustle of different voices. More than 30 people's points of view are conveyed, both Israelis and Arabs, as the author desperately tries to make sense of a conflict battled out in a land that was created the same year as he was. What Hare has really done is take point duty in a battlefield, while we remain safely back in Blighty. He has asked explosive questions to those he has met and brought compassion to a tempestuous subject. The result is a piece of shamanism, a work that allows us to listen raptly to the tales of a weary traveller, a pleasure almost as old as man himself. You could almost believe he has been there.

Simon Farquhar