David Hare has another pop at Blair

It’s to be Hare v Blair again – in spades. Sir David Hare, the left-wing playwright who came to despise Tony Blair, is to dramatise his final disenchantment with the former Prime Minister's government on stage at the National Theatre. His new play, Gethsemane, will strike at what he believes was the cynicism of New Labour by featuring a cast of colourful characters bearing a strong resemblance to Blair's circle. Notable among them are his controversial chief fundraiser, Lord Levy, and the Olympics minister Tessa Jowell, whose lawyer husband David Mills became entangled in an Italian corruption trial as Silvio Berlusconi's tax adviser.

Hare (left) has kept all details of Gethsemane, due to open in November, under wraps. But details have emerged in a leak to the Guardian. The sources say that this is Hare’s cri de coeur about a Prime Minister he had high hopes for but is bitterly disillusioned by.

In Stuff Happens, an earlier play at the National, Hare attacked Blair's part in the invasion of Iraq, portraying the PM as a demented egoist obsessed by his political standing. Hare’s characters in Gethsemane appear to be barely disguised at all. A major character in the play is Otto Fallon, the party's main fundraiser, and a Jewish music producer who creates boy bands. Lord Levy, who, after a police investigation, was not prosecuted for selling political honours in return for donations to Labour, happens to be a Jewish accountant who made his fortune founding a record label.

The Home Secretary, 'Meredith',  has a husband with business interests (and pending court cases) abroad. 'Alex', the Prime Minister, is, like Blair, "a regular kind of guy". He tells 'Meredith' that he fears the government may not survive the spectacle of her husband in handcuffs in a foreign country. It is agreed that 'Meredith' and her husband should announce that they are to separate – precisely the fate of the marriage of Tessa Jowell and David Mills after the Berlusconi affair blew up.

A spokesman for the National Theatre tells the Guardian: "It is not a documentary play. David has been very clear all along that the play is complete fiction – an imaginative response to the governing class." ·