Reviewed by Ashley Botting

If you hate theatre, I ask that you forget you feel that way. For just one night. And go see Stuff Happens, running now through December 23rd at the Royal Alex. You’re going to like it. I promise.

Mirvish Productions and Studio 180 have teamed up to remount the play, which previously ran in Toronto in 2008. It’s a good thing, too, because people should really see this show. For a bunch of reasons.

The show chronicles the events leading up to, and directly following the 2003 US Invasion of Iraq. The characters in the play are the characters in the White House at the time. Bush. Cheney. Rice. Powell. Etc. With a brush that avoids impressions of, but meticulously captures their essences, director Joel Greenberg details a compelling narrative that feels like bit CSPAN injected heroine.

Politics are often seen as boring because we only ever get to see deliberate varnish, applied to look shiny under media lights. But, in Stuff Happens we get a sense of the actual human beings, whose choices and personal dynamics determined the fate of literally millions of soldiers and civilians. We see that those with insurmountable power can be just as flawed and frightened as any of us. The role of Colin Powell is particularly tragic, and actor Nigel Shawn Williams brings him to life in one of the most compelling performances I have ever seen in this city. So, it’s cool on that level.

It’s also great because it’s been a while now since the Invasion was the topic du jour, and some of us can only recall people talking about “Freedom Fries” and pre-war protests, but when you actually watch the succession of events that took place before this war began, you get a sense of how truly absurd the reasoning was. Woven into the play are actual quotations uttered by the politicians themselves, including Donald Rumsfeld’s ludicrous (and ultimately titling) response to widespread looting in Iraq:

“Stuff happens and it’s untidy, and freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.”(April 11, 2003)

Actor David Fox captures Rumsfeld’s dichotomy of playfulness and nastiness so brilliantly, that you’ll forget you’re watching an actor on a stage. The staging is clean and crisp, the script is impeccable, and the acting is inspired. The play is historically and socially significant, but it also stands alone as a purely character-driven narrative.

If you don’t see this show, you’re with the terrorists

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