Friday, May 27, 2005

theater review - stuff happens



"Stuff Happens" is a brand new play about the series of events that led to the conflict in Iraq and the parts played by world political leaders, in particular President George W. Bush and his inner circle of foreign policy advisors. From the early search for weapons of mass destruction and the long shadow cast by 9/11, to the drive to remove the tyrannical Saddam Hussein from power, to the thousands of questions relating to oil, terror, Al Qaeda and more, "Stuff Happens" explores through public record and through David Hare's meticulous research what most likely happened behind the closed doors of power.

that is the official description on the mark taper forum website for their newest production. "stuff happens" runs until july 17 and is the newest play by celebrated author david hare, who has won nearly every playwriting award there is and even been nominated for an oscar for his script of "the hours". it has a an ensemble cast of 21 somewhat famous faces and a running time of a little over three hours and unlike the last two productions i saw at the taper, it is pretty bad.

the play was apparently a big hit in england and is making its american debut here. the fundamental problem with the whole project is that it is written as a sort of docu-play. half of it is verbatim public dialogue by the bush administration and the other half is hare's speculation of what took place behind closed doors based on his research. the big problem with the first half is, we've seen it all before. if you are halfway informed or seen the news, then these things are not new. the big problem with the second half is that it is obvious what the author thinks of these people and the made up scenes are so over the top that it takes away any credibility. i mean, even i don't george bush is as stupid as he was portrayed here. half of that is the terrible performance given by keith carradine. i don't require that the actors look or sound exactly like the characters they portray and carradine certainly didn't. but it bothered me because it was clear he was trying to sound like somebody. he was doing some accent, it just wasn't anything close to george bush's.

lorraine troussant and tyrees allen get the overacting awards for their portrayals of condoleeza rice and colin powell. allen especially seemed to think that shouting meant serious acting. stephen spinella's rendition of the french foreign minister is at best, unfunny and at worst, offensive. julian sands (who was great in "arachnophobia") is a wooden tony blair. the only two performances that come off alright are john michael higgins (who played david letterman in that mid-90's tv movie) as donald rumsfeld and dakin matthews as dick cheney. the real highlight was seeing brian george in a small role. brian is most famous for his role as babu in "the cafe" episode of seinfeld.



the staging of the play was not creative enough to justify the 3 hour run time and as i said before, it felt like watching old news you've already seen mixed with commentary you can't quite trust. everything was heavy handed and so dry i'm boring myself writing about it. i was extremely disappointed with the whole thing and don't recommend shelling out the $40 for a ticket.

overall grade - C-

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