Hare Piece

SPOTLIGHT

actresses are David Hare's muses. England's broodiest hyphenate, writer-director Hare adorns his themes with their accentuations. (His play Plenty would have been a pallid affair without the flushed cheeks and pistol swagger of Kate Nelligan.) And if actresses are his muses, Margaret Thatcher is his iron maiden. His socialist conscience stands aghast at her laissez-faire march into the millennium. In two new films, Hare has arrayed his muses in Madam's armor. Paris by Night stars Charlotte Rampling as a Thatcherite politician harassed by a man in a trench coat standing beneath a rainy lamppost. (Very Dennis Potter.) Strapless stars Blair Brown as an ingenuous American doctor wooed by a European smoochy-lips. (Very Henry James.) When Thatcherite budget cuts threaten Brown's hospital, she organizes a fashion fund-raiser featuring strapless gowns designed by her sister, Bridget Fonda. Onstage Blair Brown will be doing more Hareraising in his latest play, The Secret Rapture, making its New York debut in September under the aegis of Joe Papp. The Secret Rapture too has a Thatcherite bossily holding court, only this one has gravity, suppressed regrets, and, at the end, outstretched emotions.

Hare has said that he writes so much about women because he doesn't understand them. Happily for us, his women don't ask to be understood. The/re beyond that. Fpr a few minutes in Strapless, Bridget Fonda turns on Blair Brown and bums her cheekbones white. David Hare is never better than when he's homebrewing acid.

JAMES WOLCOTT