Stuff Happens

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This last point is crucial because Hare avoids the trap of agitprop by cannily subverting the play's anti-war bias. You see this most powerfully in a speech, credited to a journalist, that questions our tendency to view Iraq from a local political viewpoint. "From what height of luxury and excess," says the character, "we look down to condemn the exact style in which even a little was given to those who had nothing."

Instincts. Feelings. And behind them motives that are unclear even to the man who acts upon them. These are the forces of history as much as trade and oil are. That is why a playwright like David Hare can qualify as an excellent historian. Hare is fairly judicious in the material he uses, though he has made some interesting choices in shaping it. Stuff Happens was first performed at the National Theatre in London on 1 September 2004 in a production directed by Nicholas Hytner

Scene 12: The NSC reassembles and Cheney says that the story should be known as the “Crisis at the UN” so that it is no longer about America's wrongdoing but instead makes it about the UN and whether they can deliver or not. [2]

Stuff Happens! Manage Your Clutter, Clear Your Head and Discover What’s Really Important by Emma Gleeson is published by Penguin/Sandycove Hare's other key means of creating conflict is to view Colin Powell as a stern realist in a Bush war cabinet made up of deluded fantasists. In a big showdown with Bush, based on documented facts, Powell passionately presses the case for treating war as a last resort after diplomacy has been exhausted. In the play's best line, he points out the hypocrisy of American attitudes. "People keep asking," he says of Saddam, "how do we know he's got weapons of mass destruction? How do we know? Because we've still got the receipts." In the pandemic, it’s been easier than ever to fall into this cycle, not least because as humans, we crave novelty and excitement, and opportunities to access this are often limited to experiences such as shopping. The title is taken from Donald Rumsfeld's infamous comments made shortly after the fall of Baghdad in the spring of 2003. Getting these small but niggly jobs done “makes such a difference”, notes Gleeson. “You’re not in a constant battle in your home. When you need the Sellotape, you know where it is. Your quality of life goes up.”

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At times, as we have yet another rehash of familiar events, there is a feeling of "not again". The documentary style, with a chorus that is reminiscent of TV news reporters commenting on events, doesn't help. Early on Hare introduces the main players in his huge cast of characters, the figures -- including Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Kofi Annan, and Hans Blix -- very briefly stepping forward and summarily introduced.

Stuff Happens is more an indictment than a play. (...) Most of the actors, however, cannot rise above the smugness and caricature in the writing." - Howard Kissel, New York Daily News Stuff Happens had its world premiere at the Olivier Theatre at the National Theatre in London on 1 September 2004 [2] and has subsequently been performed at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum (with Keith Carradine and Julian Sands) in June 2005 and at Sydney's Seymour Centre (with Rhys Muldoon and Greg Stone) in July 2005. Greg Stone won a Helpmann Award for Best Male Actor in a Play in 2006. The play now seems less arrogant, animated history book with a fixed agenda than a fluid public speculation -- a collective work of imagination that attempts to grasp how and why an unnecessary and unwinnable war was allowed to happen." - Ben Brantley, The New York Times Is there a common reason for decluttering, or do her clients react in much the same way when asked to part with some of their material possessions? Hare presumably didn't have space for it here, but the corruption of Powell -- and how else can one term it ? -- is among the interesting stories that remain to be told.)Nicholas Farrell's Tony Blair is driven by political ambition and survival as much as by idealistic ideology. Farrell captures Blair's smile of insincerity, the earnest hand gestures and the sombre tone to his voice that Blair seems to have deliberately cultivated over the years in his efforts to convince us he is a man we can trust. The figure Rumsfeld has become -- his words now read simply as those of a maniac, desperately clinging to an illusion that was clearly false in 2003 (and is even more obviously so in 2005) -- differs sharply from his role as one of the men who did have a 'plan', practically from day one (and saw it as realisable from 11 September 2001, at the latest).

They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things, and that's what's going to happen there.

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Unwilling to admit to practically any of the many mistakes that were (and contiue to be) made, a complete absence of accountability still accepted by the American people, lessons have evidently not yet been learnt -- but Stuff Happens (and similar re-examinations of events) are a necessary and useful first step.