Stuff Happens
Stuff Happens by David Hare
Directed by Donna Spencer
Firehall Arts Centre
Oct 22 to Nov 8th, 2008
Catherine Lough Haggquist as Condoleezza Rice, William B. Davis as Donald Rumsfeld and Glen Cairns as George W. Bush in Stuff Happens. Photo by David Cooper
Vancouver, BC:
I eagerly anticipated that British playwright, David Hare's "Stuff Happens", about the road to the Iraq war, would be a fascinating and provocative play. Unfortunately for me it wasn't. During the time that I used to write "Rants, Raves and Reviews" it was not often that I felt compelled to rant. This time I do. Despite some interesting performances I found this play annoying, superficial and far too long. It runs three hours and even in the first act I was wishing that my watch had a luminous dial. But I will point out that at least after the first 90 minutes as I walked out to the foyer mumbling irritably to myself, several of my friends were quite animated in their enthusiasm for what they had seen so far.
In the author's note, Hare describes this as "a history play which happens to centre on very recent history." Through a series of commentaries addressed directly to the audience, interspersed with discussions and "meetings" of George Bush, Tony Blair and their key advisors, Hare attempts to create a devastating indictment of the way in which Bush and Blair drew their respective countries and their allies into the war in Iraq. Hare states that he quotes people verbatim and that nothing in the narrative is knowingly untrue. I think one woud be hard pressed to find anyone today who does not consider that the conduct of the war and post-war activity is a disaster, so the play is preaching to the converted. It really isn't necessary to hammer home this single message like a pile driver - pound, pound, pound. Couple that with Glen Cairns' portrayal of Bush as a moronic hillbilly, and the rest of his advisors as spineless sycophants, it results in a one dimensional, Michael Moore-like mockumentary (no I am not a Moore fan!) with no narrative arc and no dramatic tension.
Director Donna Spencer's large cast of experienced actors have their work cut out for them. Although several may bear a physical resemblance to the characters they are playing, they do not convey any sense of the immense power that these people wield. Long before she became National Security Advisor and then Secretary of State, I watched Condoleezza Rice gave a keynote address to a conference of several hundred CEO's and CFO's from major American and Canadian companies. An elegant, charismatic, eloquent speaker, she captivated this hardboiled audience. For an hour you could have heard a pin drop in the hall. Yet although Catherine Haggquist converys a sense of Rice's style and intelligence, in this play she is reduced to the "token girl in an old boys' club."
Well enough ranting. Did I like anything about this production? The saving grace for me was the work of Craig Alfredson and James Foy in the design and programming of the stunning scenes projected on to 10 large screens. From razor sharp images of the White House to the devastating pictures of the horrors of 9/11, this was really well done. Focussing on cool green projections of the tree-lined access to Camp David and mountainside views helped me keep relatively calm.
This play may make fervent anti-Bush and Anti-Americans feel good but it's not great entertainment and certainly not a comedy, although on opening night one woman laughed loudly at almost every line. But it just seems to me that if you want to question how it came about that these leaders of the free world could trap us in such a quagmire, you won't make your point by turning them into cartoon characters.
I rarely am as negative about a show as I have been in this review. If you disagree and think it's great theatre I encourage you to comment on my review. Obscene language will not be published but otherwise feel free to express your views.
Comments
Stuff Happens
I saw this play on opening night. Though it did drag on, it is worth seeing if only to shed light on Henry Adams insight into 19th century diplomacy: "With how little wisdom the world is run." In our information age with cameras, i phones, microphones et al blurring the lines between the private and public realms, we participated in the buildup to the war in Iraq and to the war itself. The trouble is, as the play indicates, there is no guarantee that all this media technology and round the clock news coverage provides us with the range of informed perspectives necessary to make informed judgments about important world issues. Instead, cynical politicians like Bush and his cronies stay up late at night figuring out ways to manipulate public opinion and distort reality in keeping with a rigidly ideological world view shared by a minority of their countrymen. By the time the world catches up to the truth, the deed is done and tens of thousands of innocents die and a country lays in ruins. If, in trying to lay bare the incompetence of Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney and the rest of the gang, Hare ruffles neocon feathers by portraying them not as they are but as caricatures, I say good on him. No, the play is not a comedy as Gillian points out. But, it is a satire and if it is offensive to depict Bush as a cartoon character, then how much more offensive was it for Bush to depict Irag as a threat to the United States on the flimsiest of intelligence. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Irag until the United States unleashed its shock and awe campaign in 2003. The play has its flaws but it is not a left wing diatribe against Bush. It is a thoughtful attempt to challenge the us or them binary of Bush, "You're with us or your against us" and replace it with an openness to the other, an openness to difference, in the hope of creating a more peaceful world for our children and grandchildren. We need more plays like this.
Bruce Hill