From The Sydney Morning Herald, 7/22/05:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/review/stuff-happens-the-seymour-centre/2005/07/21/1121539090060.html
Stuff Happens, The Seymour Centre
Reviewed by Bryce Hallett
"I don't need to explain why I say things," says the calmly cavalier
George Bush.
"That's the interesting thing about being the President."
By the time this is blurted out in David Hare's well-researched and
searching drama about the machinations leading to the war in Iraq,
Bush (Greg Stone) resembles an almost expressionless marionette with a
bounce in his frame and an urge to straighten his shoulders so as to
make him appear statuesque.
For the apparently dimwitted leader and born-again Christian it is God
who is holding the strings and controlling his - and America's - fate.
Set in Brian Thomson's soaring, shadowy, cage-like design, suggesting
the wreckage of the World Trade Centre towers and symbolising how
terrorism has altered the shape of things, Stuff Happens is immediate,
brilliantly crafted and riveting.
It's much more than a history lesson, as Hare shrewdly surmises what
might have been said and done in the political bunkers of Washington
and London.
A sustained sense of reality is produced by couching speculation in
actual speeches and utterances by the likes of Bush, Tony Blair,
Donald Rumsfeld and ***** Cheney, and in a big, skilful cast that
deftly conjures the major political players.
Some, of course, are barely more than caricatures, but their tiny,
idiosyncratic gestures and varying commands of the language can make
them as familiar as they are frightening.
Director Neil Armfield's splendidly realised production is clear,
purposeful and near-seamless.
But composer Alan John's score is unnecessarily intrusive and
superfluous at times, given the drama and cumulative force of Hare's
words and the way he leads us through a collage of opinions to see
through the rhetoric and arrive at the heart of what matters.
The play's title comes from a supposedly off-the-cuff remark by the US
Secretary of Defence, Rumsfeld (Russell Dykstra) in response to the
looting of Baghdad.
"Stuff happens ... and it's untidy, and freedom's untidy, and free
people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things."
And so it is that Hare, the author of Plenty, Racing Demon, The Judas
Kiss and Via Dolorosa, charts the events that led to the invasion of
Iraq, while highlighting the untidiness of the righteous and flawed,
the self-interested and, in the tight-wound figure of Condoleezza Rice
(Leah Purcell), the determinedly inscrutable.
Stuff Happens is more concerned with cause than effect, and, as
signalled at the outset, "the real is what will really strike you as
absurd".
That proves to be the case as these powermongers squabble over
semantics, project cool- and hot-headed authority, and remind
themselves that politics, paradoxically, is not a popularity contest.
Stone is outstanding as Bush, his portrait darkening to offer more
than a satirical stand-up routine of a cowboy out of his depth, though
there's plenty of that.
Rhys Muldoon's depiction of the politely desperate Blair is brilliant.
Dykstra is memorably manipulative as Rumsfeld, as is Russell Kiefel as
the ludicrously repugnant Cheney.
The second half is less fragmented than the first and gains
considerable stature and weight, especially in the spirited sparring
scenes involving France's Dominique de Villepin, played by Peter
Carroll, and the tactical moves of Colin Powell, played beautifully by
Wayne Blair in the way he conveys the character's emotional
containment and stifled rage.
Purcell is terrific as the ubiquitous Rice, while John Gaden and Ralph
Cotterill contribute fine work.
Some of the characters, not least Blair and Powell, display the
eloquence and inner failings of doomed Shakespearean souls, but it's
the stark final image that remains - that of the Iraqi exile
ruminating about the untold casualties of war and the fates of nations
who put faith in the wrong people.
Stuff Happens is absurd all right.
And tragic.
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Love to see it but Australia's a bit too far. Not likely that this
will be brought here but ya never know.
Harry
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