Sparks, tension build on the moral battlefield of "The Vertical Hour"

In the David Hare play "The Vertical Hour," now in its Seattle debut at ArtsWest, we meet Nadia, an Ivy League college professor and staunch defender of the U.S. war in Iraq.

A former war correspondent who served as an adviser to President Bush and was dubbed by the media as "the professor of terror" for her strong views on international terrorism, Nadia has been an eyewitness to mass human suffering in the Balkans and Baghdad.

And while many of her fellow journalists and academics argue that U.S. military action has destabilized Iraq and made it far more deadly than it was under Saddam Hussein, Nadia insists intervention was not just necessary but a moral imperative.

"When people are suffering," she declares, "you help." Particularly in the "vertical hour," the short window of time early in a crisis, when it's still possible to be helpful.

In the gallery of bold, brainy, outspoken female protagonists Hare has devised in his neo-Shavian dramas, Nadia is one of the more complex — and in some respects, most confounding. But as dynamically drawn at ArtsWest by actor Annie Lareau, her ferocity and passion are irrefutable.

Lareau's galvanic portrayal of Nadia, and Kevin McKeon's equally adept turn as Oliver, a British physician whose temperament and political views are the opposite of Nadia's, rescue Hare's play from some of its clunky contrivances and ham-handed psychologizing.

The two meet, clash and confront one another's demons during a visit to rural England by Nadia and her lover Philip (John Ulman), Oliver's son.

Nadia can't resist a debate over the Iraq war with the cool, logical and rather condescending Oliver, who opposes the war.

The two represent, to some degree, the ideological slants of America vs. Britain. But they also embody the innate attraction between the two cultures. And during their short encounter, they reveal the private battle scars and fears that have driven them both into lives of constrained compromise.

Nadia, we learn, has hidden out in academia and established a cozy haven of domesticity with Ulman's overly bland Philip to escape her masochistic, thrill-seeking impulses.

Oliver, meanwhile, is doing penance for the pain he has unintentionally caused others (including his long-estranged son). That's why he's ditched a career as a top London surgeon for a hermetic berth as a small-town doctor.

Under Carol Roscoe's well-nuanced direction, Lareau and McKeon make the most of Hare's flair for agile, dialectical discourse between intellectual equals. Their verbal thrusts and parries are sexier than most graphic love scenes. And Hare milks the erotic tension between them for all its worth.

The political discourse is truly bracing and should spark some lively post-show conversations. But once the personal regrets and revelations take over, "The Vertical Hour" gets smudgy and a bit soggy.

And the student-teacher meetings that bracket the play are long-winded and klutzy, giving little insight into Nadia's well-masked turmoil.

Hare, it seems, is not only interested in exploring who was right or wrong about Iraq, but also in exploring how one gains self-knowledge and achieves a kind of moral equilibrium.

Certainly, "The Vertical Hour" doesn't completely deliver on all counts. But the fully sculpted performances of Lareau and McKeon do.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com