'Stuff' a mission accomplished / British drama deftly replays war history/ By Anne Marie Welsh / THEATER CRITIC / July 2, 2005
CRAIG SCHWARTZ
At his Crawford, Texas, ranch, President Bush (Keith Carradine, left) entertains British Prime Minister Tony Blair (Julian Sands) in the American premiere of "Stuff Happens."
In the American premiere of this 2004 British drama, crisply directed by outgoing Centre Theatre Group head Gordon Davidson at the Mark Taper Forum, President Bush (Keith Carradine) says surprisingly little – and not just because he sometimes seems to be relying on then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice (Lorraine Toussant) to summarize for him the thrust of cabinet meetings.
читать дальшеInstead, though Carradine is too elegant to suggest the 43rd president's Texas swagger or to caricature his mouth-mangling malapropisms, the actor sketches a plausible Bush whose steely willpower – part dry drunk's single-mindedness and part born-again Christian's zeal – is his most impressive trait.
Aside from actor Dakin Matthews' spot-on and even less verbal portrayal of Vice President Dick Cheney, the most fascinating dramatic figures in the panorama that unfolds on designer Ming Cho Lee's simple black platforms are English Prime Minister Tony Blair; French minister Dominic de Villepin; the now out-of-the-headlines U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix; and the play's nearly tragic hero, Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Young, articulate and argumentative in an empathetic performance by Julian Sands, Blair struggles to maintain some leverage for the global good that is his Labour Party's mission and for Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. He does so even as he's battered by duplicitous members of Bush's cabinet and by his own party's opposition to the Iraq war planning.
Blix, played with witty restraint by Alan Oppenheimer, is a lesser figure but a powerful presence in the play. He's first glimpsed in silhouette climbing a mountain in Patagonia where, he says, "in a sweet town called El Calafate – it means 'the Blueberry' – I was given a message from a Mr. Kofi Annan." The UN secretary general asked if he'd be interested in resuming his job leading the Iraqi weapons inspections. Act 1 of "Stuff Happens" ends on a quietly dramatic note when Blix answers "Yes. I'd be interested."
Powell, acted with accumulating force and stature by Tyrees Allen, is most fully fleshed. Hare creates for him and Bush and Rice several behind-closed-doors conferences based upon the former secretary of state's public statements and known views, though with imagined dialogue. On Jan. 13, 2002, two months before the overt invasion, he learns from Bush that the UN inspections are a ruse: "These inspections are a distraction. They weaken us. They weaken our purpose," the president tells him.
One of the play's emotional high points follows when, knowing he's been hoodwinked by the neocon cabal, Powell is ambushed by the French who will no longer back even the idea of a second U.N. resolution declaring war. Instead, they go public with their objections to the American invasion plan. Rather than resigning during the crisis as many thought he might, Powell first rages ("I've got a bunch of right-wing nut cases in the White House. I've got the treacherous French in the Security Council. I'm standing in the f-ing road! And the sh-is flowing one way. I thought we had an agreement!")
Then, ever the good soldier, he hardens, bowing to the hawkishness of his commander in chief. As Hare understands him, power has not corrupted Powell, so much as his military training has made him unfit for independent action within the political hierarchy.
Onstage, Cheney is a tight-lipped bystander, with Matthews able to invest his brief, blunt speeches with layers of ominous meaning. Seldom have a few well-chosen words sounded so threatening as they do in this tour de force of a performance. Among the highly skilled 22-member cast (18 are men) assembled by Davidson, John Michael Higgins evokes Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with similar physical fidelity, and Stephen Spinella seems even more like Villepin than the Frenchman who recently became President Jacques Chirac's prime minister.
Hare is prolific and can be verbose; here he rises to the greatness of the public occasion. "Stuff Happens" delivers a second draft of history that provokes more pity and dread as the scope of the Iraq insurgency grows.
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