The Blues

David Hare's The Blue Room is such a treat to read that I think I can rightly assume it must play brilliantly in the theatre. And it must be great to act in, assuming one is a great actor. The device of having one actor to play the five male roles and one actress to play the females may be obvious but it's obviously right as a metaphor for human behaviour, especially when that behaviour sails around the treacherous reefs of projection and desire. (I'm borrowing those two terms from Hare's brief but incisive preface.) Each of the ten scenes positively hums with insight, yet is funny at the same time. I suppose this reminds us of a terrible yet redemptive truth: there is nothing more sadly hilarious than the human species with sex on its collective mind.

Incidentally, I've never seen Max Ophuls's film of Schnitzler's play, the basis of Hare's script, though I've heard of how good it is many times. That's a little reminder of how little I know of what I guess might be termed world cinema. There's little if any opportunity to view such classics on tv here and I now feel some regret that I didn't make use of the frequent opportunities afforded by British television to educate myself in that direction when I lived in England. Maybe it's time to dig deep into the old pockets and buy some of this stuff on DVD, assuming it's available these days.