David Hare’s new Broadway play, “The Vertical Hour,” has hardly been a hit with American critics, but hometown critic Michael Billington views it from an entirely different perspective. “In many ways, it’s a characteristic Hare play. Dealing with the emotional journey of a woman who has swapped war reporting for academia, it is precisely about the intersection of public and private lives. But what moved me, almost as much as the play itself, was the audience response: the almost palpable hunger of Broadway theatregoers for a play about big issues. Even more than it might in Britain, Hare’s play fulfils an urgent need.”