Amy's View
From 13 May 2002
To 18 May 2002
by David Hare
Description
Esme Allen is a well-known West End Actress at just the moment when the West End is no longer offering actors a regular way of life. The visit of her young daughter, Amy, with a new boyfriend sets in a train of events which result in many emotional and professional challenges sixteen years later. Exploring the passionate relationship between a charismatic mother and her loving daughter, Amy's View mixes love, life and art in a funny, provocative and totally absorbing way.
Extracts from the Director's Notes
Amy's View is a facinating play and one that resists definitions or at least raises interesting questions when one attempts to pigeonhole it. In some ways it is a family play; it can also be regarded as a vihicle for two strong female actors of different generation; but it is also - that unfashionable beast - an ideas play.
It is supposedly one of three plays by the writer about self sacrifice (the other two being Skylight and The Judas Kiss), but unlike the other two it ia play in which the martyr figure does not survive until the end of the drmatic action. It is also a play in which the central philosophy of the character gives the play its name (Love conquers all) is frequently in question; and may not even be fully endorsed by the end.
Although it is a play with a female character named in it title, it is another female role which dominates the action, even though it is dabatable whether the part of Esme Allen really provides an identity figure for the audience. The facts that she is not present for the first ten minutes of the play and ends the first act with a spectacular display of insensitivity certainly works against her; and yet it is this role that has been seen as one of the best in the modern theatrical repertoire for a mature actress and has been taken by, among others, Judy Dench and Susannah York. It is a peach of a part, it is true but also notoriously difficult.
The daughter role, Amu, also is worth considering. Is Amy's View as a title supposed to catch an echo of Amor Vincit (Love Conquers)? Also is the part a new twist on the Sylvia Plath myth? Likr Ted Hughes' wife, Amy buries her writing talent, serves as a prop for the man in her life, loses herself in children, becomes depressed and ... but to say any more would give the plot away. However, audiences, besides immersing themselves in the charcters journey, should asses the significance of Amy thematically too; it is her life and ideas that hang over the discussions in Act Four; but then one must ask where did the philosophy ever get her.