Written as a double bill for the National Theatre, The Bay at Nice and Wrecked Eggs opened in the Cottesloe directed by Hare in September 1986 as Pravda concluded its run on the Olivier stage. Centring on the authentication of an unseen Matisse, The Bay at Nice continues the investigation of the art object begun in Teeth ‘n’ Smiles and A Map of the World, while the more immediately accessible but severely flawed Wrecked Eggs picks up from Dreams of Leaving the theme of sexual and moral promiscuity. What links them – and their settings of Cold War Russia and contemporary America – is a parallel structure and a dual exploration of the nature of freedom, and what they reveal is a further shift from history to poetry, from the epic to the tragic.

A matter of taste

On entering the theatre for The Bay at Nice, the audience is confronted with a large painting. Vivid against the total white of its four walls, it defines the room as a gallery and dominates the stage. The atmosphere is hallowed and apparently timeless, although the time and location are clearly given in the programme as Leningrad, 1956. The careful formality of speech which – by the placing of adverbs at the beginning of sentences or the use of the continuous present – sounds translated, and the accent of the players under Hare's own direction served as a constant reminder.