David Hare, along with the likes of Howard Brenton, David Edgar and Caryl Churchill, was one of a group of politically committed young playwrights who emerged in the 1970s. Most of his work has been for the stage, but "Dreams of Leaving" was the second of two television plays he wrote for the BBC's "Play for Today" series. (The first was "Licking Hitler"). It is perhaps less directly political than many of his works, and tells the story of the unhappy love affair between William, a young tabloid journalist, and Caroline, an assistant at an art gallery.
As another reviewer has pointed out, Hare's title comes from a quote from George Orwell:-
"There is no comfort. Our lives dismay us. We have dreams of leaving and it is the same for everyone I know."
The word "leaving" may at times have its literal meaning. William, originally from Nottingham, leaves his home town for Fleet Street, the traditional home of the London newspaper industry. I think, however, that Hare intended us also to understand the word metaphorically; "dreams of leaving" can mean "dreams of a new life" as well as "dreams of moving to a new place". His characters, however, seem doomed to find that there is no comfort, whether or not they make efforts to leave their old life behind them.
William is the more stable of the two lovers. After his initial move south to London he sticks with his job at the newspaper, even though he hates it, feeling that his life is being wasted in producing something meaningless and trivial. ("Royalty and dogs"). Hare rather pulls his punches in his satire of newspaper life; five years later he and Brenton were to attack British journalism far more savagely in their co-authored play "Pravda", which excoriated not just the triviality of the tabloid press but also its political bias, unfairness, vindictiveness and contempt for the truth. Perhaps in 1971, the year in which the play is set, the tabloids had not deteriorated as much as they were to do by 1985. (In that earlier year there were in fact only two national daily tabloids, the "Sun" and the "Mirror", in Britain. The "Mail" and the "Express" were still broadsheets and the "Daily Star" was not launched until 1978).
Caroline is much more fickle and mercurial. After being sacked from the gallery she goes from one job to another, never staying long in any of them, and shows an equal lack of commitment in her relationship with William, to whom she is often unfaithful before even he eventually tires of her. Her behaviour is clearly due to emotional and psychological problem, because she ends up in a mental hospital.
I said above that this is not a directly political play, but it can be seen as indirectly so. It was first broadcast in 1980, near the beginning of Margaret Thatcher's period of office, and from the viewpoint of that year the "swinging sixties" and early seventies, before the oil crisis of 1973/74 and the economic recession of the second half of the decade, could seem like a lost golden age. Of course, as Charles Kingsley reminds us, "each old age of gold was an iron age too", and here Hare is reminding us that in the early seventies even the affluent middle-class members of the 'London scene' to which Caroline belongs, or likes to think she belongs, had their problems. One critic called the play "a diatribe against the modish, emotionally detached urban lifestyle". "Dreams of Living", however, is as much a human drama as it is a social or political one, and Hare, who also acts as director, is able to elicit fine performances from a handsome, youthful Bill Nighy as William and from Kate Nelligan as the troubled Caroline. (Another memorable turn comes from Mel Smith, at this period finding fame as part of the "Not the Nine O'Clock News" team, as William's colleague, the cynical old hack Xan). "Dreams of Leaving" is perhaps not the greatest or the best-remembered of the "Plays for Today", but it is certainly worth watching. 7/10.
As another reviewer has pointed out, Hare's title comes from a quote from George Orwell:-
"There is no comfort. Our lives dismay us. We have dreams of leaving and it is the same for everyone I know."
The word "leaving" may at times have its literal meaning. William, originally from Nottingham, leaves his home town for Fleet Street, the traditional home of the London newspaper industry. I think, however, that Hare intended us also to understand the word metaphorically; "dreams of leaving" can mean "dreams of a new life" as well as "dreams of moving to a new place". His characters, however, seem doomed to find that there is no comfort, whether or not they make efforts to leave their old life behind them.
William is the more stable of the two lovers. After his initial move south to London he sticks with his job at the newspaper, even though he hates it, feeling that his life is being wasted in producing something meaningless and trivial. ("Royalty and dogs"). Hare rather pulls his punches in his satire of newspaper life; five years later he and Brenton were to attack British journalism far more savagely in their co-authored play "Pravda", which excoriated not just the triviality of the tabloid press but also its political bias, unfairness, vindictiveness and contempt for the truth. Perhaps in 1971, the year in which the play is set, the tabloids had not deteriorated as much as they were to do by 1985. (In that earlier year there were in fact only two national daily tabloids, the "Sun" and the "Mirror", in Britain. The "Mail" and the "Express" were still broadsheets and the "Daily Star" was not launched until 1978).
Caroline is much more fickle and mercurial. After being sacked from the gallery she goes from one job to another, never staying long in any of them, and shows an equal lack of commitment in her relationship with William, to whom she is often unfaithful before even he eventually tires of her. Her behaviour is clearly due to emotional and psychological problem, because she ends up in a mental hospital.
I said above that this is not a directly political play, but it can be seen as indirectly so. It was first broadcast in 1980, near the beginning of Margaret Thatcher's period of office, and from the viewpoint of that year the "swinging sixties" and early seventies, before the oil crisis of 1973/74 and the economic recession of the second half of the decade, could seem like a lost golden age. Of course, as Charles Kingsley reminds us, "each old age of gold was an iron age too", and here Hare is reminding us that in the early seventies even the affluent middle-class members of the 'London scene' to which Caroline belongs, or likes to think she belongs, had their problems. One critic called the play "a diatribe against the modish, emotionally detached urban lifestyle". "Dreams of Living", however, is as much a human drama as it is a social or political one, and Hare, who also acts as director, is able to elicit fine performances from a handsome, youthful Bill Nighy as William and from Kate Nelligan as the troubled Caroline. (Another memorable turn comes from Mel Smith, at this period finding fame as part of the "Not the Nine O'Clock News" team, as William's colleague, the cynical old hack Xan). "Dreams of Leaving" is perhaps not the greatest or the best-remembered of the "Plays for Today", but it is certainly worth watching. 7/10.
