One of the features that distinguishes theatrical drama from TV and film is that the same script can be given two radically different productions. Eight autumns ago, I saw the premiere production of David Hare’s The Vertical Hour as a major Broadway opening, starring Julianne Moore and Bill Nighy, that made news headlines in America. Now the play is revived, with much lower budgets and publicity, at The Park in north London – and, proving a peculiarity of the art form, is by far the better version.The play’s relationship to recent history has also interestingly shifted. Hare dramatises a clash between an American liberal academic, Nadia Blye, who supports military intervention in the Middle East, and Oliver Lucas, a Shropshire GP who shares the opposition that encouraged