The Blue Room

The Blue Room is a 1998 play written by David Hare. It is a play written in 10 acts, each act having two characters, and the entire play is performed by two actors. The play is loosely based on a 1921 series of sketches by Arthur Schnitzler, which were deemed too sexual and controversial for the day. David Hare takes this material and puts a modern spin on it by setting the acts in an unnamed contemporary city, which can be interpreted by the reader.

The most interesting concept about this play is that all of the characters are linked together. Each relationship leads to the next, until it comes around full circle. The play starts off with The Girl and the Cab Driver and ends with The Aristocrat and the Girl from the first act. Hare connects these characters together in such a realistic and believable way, that you never feel that their relationships are contrived. The biggest seller (in terms of ticket sales, probably) is that each scene features a sexual act. You never see any of the sex acts; in the script the stage directions show the lights going out and a slide is projected with the amount of time the sex act takes (ranging from zero minutes to two hours and twenty-eight minutes!). The only scene not to feature a sex act is the final scene. It was a little difficult to visualize this and the quick changes between each scene (they seem very fast!), so I wish I had seen the actual performance to get a better perspective on that (not, as you might be thinking, to see Nicole Kidman naked).

The most powerful scene for me was The Married Woman and the Politician scene. Up until this point, the relationships and sexual acts have been casual, conventional, and relatively guilt-free. In this act, we learn about a married couple who discuss their own relationship and the past sexual relationships of the politician, while knowing all along that the married woman has had an affair in the previous scene. With this scene, Hare reaches a more meaningful relationship, one that is actually driven by the love that the politician has for his wife, and the obvious doubt that his wife has about their relationship. It is the turning point of the play: every act after this is darker and more desperate.

I enjoyed reading The Blue Room. I like the way that David Hare uses dialogue and not as much action to propel his scenes. I have seen several performances of his plays and have enjoyed all of them. I think that if I had read this play when it came out (at the tender age of 16) I would have been horrified, or at least put off, by many of the situations in this play. However, now being almost 30 and having read more explicit materials, I appreciate the honesty about love, gender, sex, and betrayal that this play evokes.