Ethan Hawke’s ‘A Bright Ray of Darkness’ draws on his acting career

When 30-something actor William Harding arrives in New York City from South Africa, he finds his whole world shattered. A brief affair he had there while making a film was splashed all over the tabloids and social media, and now everyone knows his rock star wife is filing for divorce. While dealing with this, he also has to prepare for the role of Hotspur in a Broadway production of Shakespeare’s histories, “Henry IV, Part 1” and “Henry IV, Part 2.” 

So begins Ethan Hawke’s third novel, “A Bright Ray of Darkness.” The American actor and director, who played the role of Hotspur on Broadway in 2003, knows his Shakespeare. Readers will also wonder how much of this book echoes Hawke’s own life, including his 7-year marriage to actor Uma Thurman. 

As the novel begins, Harding has moved into a hotel. He’s trying to figure out what went wrong with his marriage, how to hold on to the two kids he adores, and how to do right by the Broadway role. His go-to coping techniques – booze, sex, and cocaine – do not help him. Harding is exasperating, lovable, and comically blind to his own ego. Acting is a gift he’s grateful for, and so is this play; the structure of rehearsal is his reed of salvation. It enables him to forget himself.

“In taking on and inhabiting the accoutrements of another’s being – where they are from, their accent, their clothes, their background – you realize that every element of your own personality is malleable,” Harding says. “You can do it, you can wear the skin of another human being – and yet still you are you. This, in its own small way, feels profound because it illustrates that none of the things you point to as identity are intrinsic.”

Hawke most recently he played the violent, religious abolitionist John Brown in Showtime’s version of James McBride’s novel “The Good Lord Bird.” Some of Brown’s unhingedness and passion comes through in Harding, but without the moral clarity. 

Hotspur is an apt role for Harding at this point: He’s a rebellious warrior who verbally abuses others and makes bad decisions. Harding uses his real life anger to dive into his character; it makes him feel alive and powerful. But one particularly ripping scream, however, blows out his voice. Does he go on vocal rest? Take care of himself? No. 

But others do. During a performance, Harding overhears an audience member mention his adultery. Backstage, the actress playing innkeeper Mistress Quickly hugs him as he cries. When he locks himself in the bathroom, unable to go back on, his dresser, Michael, verbally smacks him through the door. “You’re crying ’cause you are getting pushed through some kind of rebirth canal. Wake up and serve those children. Get the best custody deal you can – I don’t care if it’s one stinkin’ day a year – it will be one stinkin’ day a year they get to have a grown man for a father.” 

Everyone Harding comes into contact with – a cab driver, fellow actors, his mother – gives him advice like this. His mother, who has come to babysit the kids, says, “See, for you, death is scary because in death all the ‘specialness’ of your life will evaporate. Once you’re dead, the movies, the magazine covers, the money, the art, the curtain calls – all these things won’t matter any more than a fireworks display in 1956. Fun while it lasted, ya know, kid?”

At times, Hawke’s characters sound like they’re from B movies – a bit over the top. But elsewhere his writing evokes both the beauty and tawdriness of New York. And he teaches the reader a lot about theater: How lines of different colored tape on the floor denote blocking for each scene, what fight calls are, and what prosthetic scars are made of. “Scurrying through the ropes and curtains across the back shadows of the stage, rushing to make an entrance on time, picking up our weapons together from the giant barrels – all the mundane aspects of our performance, the tiny beats that held up the flashy ones. They were where it felt possible to touch and hold the magic; just for a second.”

In addition to wrecking his voice, an infection puts Harding in the hands of a surgeon, who insists on operating immediately. But Harding is now committed to the play and manages to get through it with just local anesthetic. He uses the pain onstage to excoriate everyone. He’s filled with his own power. But lying on the stage, after his character is killed, he really listens to his fellow actors and gains an appreciation for their talent. His edges soften.

As he moves through the novel, Harding has some epiphanies about his formerly beloved wife, Mary, who has grown distant as her fame increases. “A Bright Ray of Darkness” is an engaging book for those who love theater and Shakespeare. Harding’s journey may not be a unique one – he learns the unsurprising human lessons that celebrity is fleeting and human connections are enduring – but Hawke makes it fun to go on the ride with him.