The prospect of seeing Maggie Smith and Judi Dench together was enough in itself to create an unusual sense of excitement about David Hare's new play The Breath of Life, at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. If you hire a pair of Rolls-Royces for the evening, you are bound to make an effect. But if you are going to get anywhere, you still need fuel.
Madeleine, the character played by Smith, is an expert on Islamic art who once ran her own department in a big museum. Now she lives in retirement on the Isle of Wight. Frances, the character played by Dench, is a popular novelist. She is writing a memoir, and she has shown up because there are things she wants to get straight about the long affair Madeleine had with her husband, Martin (he's a QC). She also brings news that she has been deserted. Martin has decamped to Seattle with a much younger woman. Madeleine is prickly and sarcastic, but she is still willing to open up, and the two women talk their way deep into the night. Topic A on the agenda is Martin. He sounds an absolute horror.
Their preoccupation is understandable - talking about their involvement with him is why Frances is there - but it is still surprising that we should learn so little about the rest of their lives. We hear almost nothing about their respective careers, for instance. Frances doesn't even rise to the bait when Madeleine launches an attack on novelists in general: it is inane, but you would have thought it would have warranted some kind of reaction.
One must differentiate, however. Frances is passive, Madeleine is aggressive. Frances scarcely exists, except in bare outline. Madeleine is an undoubted presence. There's no contest between them.
The best moments are when Madeleine speaks about growing older and refusing to give up - on the contrary, finding new solace in her work. (She is now a freelance.) But it can't be said that in other respects she shows any great signs of maturity. She preens herself on her sub-sophisticated wisecracks. (The Isle of Wight is where people "crawl south and expire".) She launches into some dismayingly crude anti-American diatribes. And for the rest, it is back to memories of Martin.
Perhaps by the end we are meant to feel that the two women are finally getting the wretched man out of their systems. Perhaps we are meant to conclude that they have better days stretching ahead. It is hard to tell, and harder still to care: for that to happen, we would have to feel far more in touch with their inner lives.
The actors still lend the evening a certain distinction. Judi Dench projects a noble anguish and makes the most of the fine moment when she recalls seeing Martin for the first time. Maggie Smith, who naturally has no trouble with the sarcasms, proves equally good at conveying a sense of loss. These are considerable achievements. But there is only so much that even the best actor can do to transform a play, and the sense of hollowness persists.
This article appeared in The Telegraph (UK) on October 20, 2002.