HOWZAT

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Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being even-handed. According to Hare’s long-term collaborator Richard Eyre, “he is very, very good at putting the opposition case . . . he’s an absolute master of dialectic”. But this can lead to wishy-washiness. The artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe, Dominic Dromgoole, wrote a bracing attack on Hare in his 2002 almanac The Full Room, claiming that Hare “wants to see liberals battling, but most crucially, [wants] the romance of liberals losing . . . You get the feeling that somewhere in David Hare’s heart, he not only sympathises with the enemy, he wants them to win.” There is certainly a strong conservative instinct in Hare’s work, be it the “this country’s going to the dogs” undercurrent of The Permanent Way or the nostalgia for a disappearing Britain and distaste for modernity evinced by Amy’s View.

Dromgoole’s prime witness for the prosecution was Hare’s threadbare The Blue Room, a 1998 celebrity confection “conceived by millionaires, performed by millionaires and watched almost exclusively by others on the off-chance of a glimpse of Nicole Kidman’s butt”.

The Blue Room isn’t alone among throwaway Hares. Given that, in the past decade, he has penned several plays that even his fans find hard to love (My Zinc Bed, The Breath of Life, The Judas Kiss), it’s remarkable how his big-hitting reputation sustains.

That reputation is certainly still bolstered by his early work — of which Plenty and Fanshen are the pinnacles — and more so by his “state of the nation” plays at the National at the turn of the 1990s: Racing Demon, Murmuring Judges and The Absence of War. Some believe that “state of the nation” drama is the acme of the playwright’s art — and, since his trilogy, theatre’ s powers-that-be have cast Hare as the master of it. I’m all for such plays, insofar as I admire their ambition and I like it when theatre muscles in on public life. But I have learnt more about the state of the nation, or the world, from less self-important, less obvious plays: from Caryl Churchill’s electrifying Far Away, from Gregory Burke’s robust Black Watch, from Kay Adshead’s Bogus Woman.

A theatre culture with its eye on the future would give more space — at the National, in the West End, on Broadway, even — for these writers to redefine what a “state of the nation” play can be. To address the world not in the moral and dialectical language of Shavian drama, but using all the playful, oblique, brutal and surprising new languages that British theatre, and British life, has acquired since. There’s a place for Hare in this multicoloured, shape-shifting drama-sphere — as one honest practitioner among many, to be judged, like others, on the merits of each play. But for him to be “5ft above the ground, looking down on humanity” — well, to paraphrase the man himself, that’s what makes David Hare boring.

TEN PRETENDERS TO HARE’S CROWN

Kay Adshead Has an impressive canon of political plays, including the immigration tragedy Bogus Woman and the apartheid redemption drama Bones.

Richard Bean If there’s a vacancy for a comic David Hare, Richard Bean — whose works include the award-winning epic of British agriculture, Harvest — is he.

Gregory Burke Tough, colloquial Scots playwright behind the blistering globalisation comedy Gagarin Way and the Iraq-set Black Watch.

Caryl Churchill Veteran dramatist whose recent elliptical masterpieces A Number and Far Away have tackled cloning and a world at endless war.

Tanika Gupta The writer of the sex-tourism play Sugar Mummies also scored a campaigning hit in 2005 with Gladiator Games, a docu-drama about the death in prison of Zahid Mubarek.

Peter Morgan Prolific writer who currently boasts Frost/Nixon in the West End, The Queen on cinema screens and the Blair/Brown drama The Deal in recent memory.

Joe Penhall Compassionate, deceptively political playwright who has explored “care in the community” (Some Voices) and celebrity culture (Dumb Show).

Simon Stephens Belied his reputation for tenderness with the disturbing Motortown, about a squaddie returning from Iraq.

Debbie Tucker Green Densely poetic dramatist with a recent string of provocative plays, both personal (Dirty Butterfly) and public (Stoning Mary, which transposes Africa’s wars to the UK).

Roy Williams Examines the contradictions of our multicultural society in plays such as Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads, about England football fans.

Amy’s View is at the Garrick, WC2 (0870 8901104). The Vertical Hour opens at the Music Box Theatre, New York (001 212-239 6200), on Thursday. Read Times reviews of previous David Hare plays at here