The Secret Rapture and Other Plays by David Hare

David Hare has been described as one of Britain's best contemporary playwright. I don't particularly agree, but I don't disagree. The reason for this would be that David Hare isn't the best playwright I have ever read, but he is the only contemporary British playwright that I know of so... yeah. This book contains 5 of Mr. Hare's most successful plays. One of them, which isn't even a play, stars Judi Dench. I think that my favorite play in here is called "Fanshen." It is about a village in China during the war between the Nationalist Party and the Kuomintang. The word Fanshen means to turn over, which is what most Chinese people were doing with their land. They were giving it all away to the party that was in power in the area. This play is about a village that refused to do so and overthrew the landlords in their area, taken over all of the land in the area, and manage for themselves, something which was unheard of in their feudalistic society. This play is basically a commentary on the workings of a communist society and who should really be in charge. The thing is about his plays is that all of the characters are amazingly developed. The characters really just jump off of the page. The only thing that I don't like about these plays is that most of the time, I have no idea what was happening during some these plays. The plots to 2/5 of these plays made no sense to me. One was about some divorce or something, and the other one was a play in a play in a movie, which REALLY messed with my brain.