David Hare

Yes, please.

Um, and then we've got David Hare and Richard Eyre.

I'm really happy that Richard Eyre and David Hare are coming.

That, um, uh, Richard Eyre used to be-

Yes

Well, I really hope you enjoyed that conversation with Nicholas Hytner, one of many theater directors, actors, and writers who have been guests on This Cultural Life.

Bill Nighy, Gillian Anderson, Kristin Scott Thomas, David Hare, and Robert Icke, to name just a few.

You can hear them and every other guest from all of our previous 14 series on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts internationally.

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I get really excited about political plays.

I don't always love David Hare as a playwright, but David Hare wrote these three verbatim plays.

One of them called The Power of Yes, which was about the 2008 economic collapse.

We can all remember that.

And over the next decade, massive names were attached.

You had Stephen Daldry attached to direct, dramatist David Hare writing the screenplay.

Then Robert Zemeckis was eyeing it to direct.

And the casting rumors were equally spectacular.

Yeah, and then she's trying on these dresses, and Anna's sitting there and like watching this.

And someone told me, David Hare told me that they're like best friends.

David Hare, the playwright, who I interviewed for Anna: The Biography.

Mm-hmm.

He was like, "They're ...

Now, other, dare I want to say it, lesser podcasts would do emergency episodes about a new prime minister or a change of government or a ministerial resignation, but, um, we're recording an emergency podcast because a 30-year-old play has returned to BBC iPlayer.

So, The Absence of War has returned to BBC iPlayer, so we're using this opportunity to revisit David Hare's play about a Labour leader who has to listen to so much conflicting advice from his myriad advisors.

So just give us a minute to pen our memo to Andy Burnham, and then we'll turn to the play.

[whimsical music] So, John, several months ago, I think before we probably even recorded an episode of this podcast, several glasses of wine into an evening, I'm pretty sure I promised we would, at some point, record an episode about The Absence of War with you, and you...

... was who he was going for.

And there's other advisors played by Claire Higgins and Barbara Leigh Hunt, directed by Richard Eyre, who went on to do Notes on a Scandal, the Cate Blanchett film.

David Hare, yeah, he, as you say, this is part of a trilogy.

He's done a few other political plays, which I, I dare say we should do.