Reality Bites
There's nothing likable about what happens in Stuff Happens, David Hare's irate political play about the war in Iraq. While the playwright pegs it as a history play "driven by themes," it specifically focuses on facts and events surrounding the American invasion of Iraq. This tactic is compelling and more than one-sided at first, but by Act II, the constant pitch of the playwright's argument diffuses its impact.
Certainly the information presented is not new to most of Hare's audience, although his particular zing draws out the devastating details. For instance, there's the $8 million in Halliburton stock that Dick Cheney has accrued since he became vice president, and the 100,000 innocent Iraqis who have been killed. These issues are drawn into sharp relief, as are the characters. Jay O. Sanders affects the George W. swagger and his self-satisfied shrug. He is cunning and despicable. Not that his opponents are any more likable. The supercilious French prime minister, Dominique de Villepin (Robert Sella), proves particularly reviling, and Hare is openly condemning of Saddam Hussein. Try as they may, neither Colin Powell (Peter Francis James) nor Tony Blair (Byron Jennings) are true protagonists: the Axis of Evil is far too efficient.
The title of the play is attributed to a remark by Donald Rumsfeld (Jeffrey De Munn), who, when questioned about the looting of Baghdad's treasures by American soldiers, shrugged it off with, "Stuff happens." As portrayed here through fictional reenactment in the Oval Office, the terse secretary of defense was also there to coin the phrase the "War on Terror." "That's good. That's vague," he remarks.
How Stuff Happens fares as a history play remains, of course, to be seen. Right now, it looks and acts a lot like reality.