There is no comparison to the real Samantha Power
The lead character of David Hare's new play, "The Vertical Hour," has a lot of surface level similarities to NBCC winner Samantha Power, writes Charles McNulty in the LA Times:
"Moore plays Nadia Blye, a "political studies" professor at Yale who was formerly a foreign correspondent. She's known as a terrorism expert, but her interest lies more broadly in exposing human rights abuses.
The model for her character seems to be Samantha Power, the similarly fetching, red-haired Harvard professor whose book "A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide" would be just the kind that Nadia would write if she were at all believable."
McMulty goes on to add, however, that real life figures like Power are almost impossible to play on stage:
"An actor can't just fake the articulate brilliance and moral fierceness of someone like Power; she has to demonstrate these qualities -- and that requires more than just an appreciation of their worth."
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posted by John Freeman 3:10:00 AM
2 Comments:
I saw THE VERTICAL HOUR. Julianne Moore is terribly miscast. I know war correspondents, male and female, through my work as a vice president of the Overseas Press Club, and they risks their lives every hour in current war zones and conflict areas around the world. I have interviewed Jessica Stern, a terrorism expert at Harvard now (played in a forgettable film by Nicole Kidman). Moore doesn't have the gravitas on stage to be a foreign correspondent or a terrorism expert. And the script by David Hare doesn't seem to give much meat the character either. A wasted opportunity. Happily, we have the real Samantha Power (and the real Jessica Stern) writing books to remind us of the intellectual and moral rigor of their missions.
This posting about Samantha Power Sunday (Dec. 3) calls to mind why serving as a National Book Critics Circle judge can feel worthwhile, despite reading hundreds of books a year for no pay while also trying to earn a living as an author and reviewer.
During 2002, Power published her first book "A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide." New Republic Books/Basic Books/Perseus Group served as publisher of the 610-page tome about the worst kinds of deaths imaginable to me.
The book caught my attention, and I received a review assignment. I certainly did not "discover" the book. But my review hit before the general adulation. I also became the first champion of the book among the 24 NBCC judges, and remained the only champion for much of the year.
When the book won the NBCC general nonfiction prize, I felt elated, like I had made a difference. When I presented the award to Power at the NBCC awards ceremony, I received the bonus of a hug and a kiss.
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