Harebrained "Page Eight"

Did anyone else watch PBS Sunday evening at nine pm to see David Hare's much ballyhooed all-star-cast British drama on the fashionable subject of intelligence and espionage? The weakness of the play is the McGuffin. It is out in the open -- the playwright did not have the Hitchcockian good sense to keep it concealed or to bury it in the plot. What is the shocking secret that could bring the Prime Minister to shame, and that forces him him to avoid being blackmailed by promoting a Home Secretary to Deputy Prime Minister? It is just that the heads of His Majesty's government (read Tony Blair) knew that the arrogant cowboys across the Atlantic were obtaining vital information by tortuting prisoners in camps. The suppressed info is not all that shocking on the one hand and on the other it lacks the moral urgency and clarity of the secret that, for example, haunts Joe Keller in Arthur Miller's "All My Sons." What are they pissed off about, those who would be righteous in England's green and pleasant land? Is it that the Yanks are using torture? Or is it that the info obtained therefrom, including possible terrorist activity in England, was not properly shared with the Brits? If you answer with the former you can't also be bugged by the latter without quoting Emerson on a foolish consistency, blinking and downing your Scotch and soda. All that talent -- all those fine actors, Michael Gambon, Judy Davis, Bill Nighy, Rachel Weisz -- with so little to show for it. -- DL