It's good to see that Olney Theater, a small, country theater in Maryland, 12 miles north of D.C. and 23 miles south of Baltimore, is still doing first rate professional work almost 60 years since I first drove there to see famous actors in straw-hat summer stock and more than 40 years since I later saw fine repertory work there after Catholic University's Theatre Department took it over. Olney has expanded to four stages but still has the old wooden actors' residence and a charming rural setting. And its production of Stuff Happens was stunning.
Quite a few members of the American Theater Critics Association saw the U.S. premiere of David Hare's Stuff Happens which ran in Los Angeles almost exactly three years earlier than Olney's production. Though Gordon Davidson's elaborate production was larger and included several admired actors playing these real-life politicians (Keith Carradine as George W. Bush, Julian Sands as Tony Blair), those I spoke to who had seen both were at least as happy with Olney's more modest production.
One advantage was that Olney's was shorter and more intimate, though the play has been shrinking from London's Olivier Auditorium to L.A.'s
Mark Taper Forum and then Daniel Sullivan's version in New York's Public Theater's even-smaller Newman Theater in 2006. Olney's director Jeremy Skidmore made no effort to have his actors look like or imitate the famous people they portrayed. Indeed, most played more than one person, and though they no doubt have local followers no one of the fine cast was familiar to me; so there was no distracting concern about accurate impersonations.
Hare's docudrama is sometimes densely detailed and full of actual quotations; and though it is certainly Liberal and anti-Bush and Anti-Blair, and, though now modified to be a little kinder (still far from favorably regarding Condoleeza Rice or even Colin Powell), it is not even-handed or neutral. What is surprising is that Hare did not take the popular Liberal tack of the day and make fun of Bush. Bush is seen as the clear-cut winner in the march toward war with Iraq, a man of great personal power, if not exactly superior comprehension. Author Hare described it as "a play about how a supposedly stupid man, George W. Bush, gets everything he wants -- and a supposedly clever man, Tony Blair, ends up with nothing he wants."
Steve Schmidt made Tony Blair complex and initially persuasive, but so ego-driven that he seems almost unaware that he's being manipulated. Rick Foucheaux 's Bush got chuckles with hints of foolishness and mental inferiority, but his intense self-belief was scary. Director Skidmore had his large cast move their white chairs in virtually choreographed patterns on designer James Kronzer's shiny black floor. That movement and Dan Covey's lighting and projections created mood-changes. Debra Kim Sevigny's ordinary street clothes were punctuated by power suits and contrasts between a comfortable open-collared superior and his follower's tightly tied necktie and buttoned suit to establish relationships. And those groups of actors, mostly men, moving very close to us on the open stage at audience-level, created an uncomfortable immediacy, as the drama moved inevitably to betrayal and war.
Carlos Bustamante memorably created an almost sneeringly contemptuous Jacques Chirac, chillingly unmoved by the prospects of slaughtered innocents so long as France could remain independent of Bush and Blair.
Stuff Happens (its title taken from Donald Rumsfeld's typically cynical response to complaints that Iraq's ancient treasures were being looted and even destroyed with the unconcerned abetment of American troops) is overlong anyway. Hare tends to drive his points home with excessive emphasis. But Jeremy Skidmore's admittedly trimmed production had a controlled but forceful, stylized presentation and an impeccable cast that kept me enthralled, despite my familiarity with the play.
