Readings Happen: Hot David Hare Iraq Play Gets Airing at Hartford Stage | Playbill

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News Readings Happen: Hot David Hare Iraq Play Gets Airing at Hartford Stage Well, that didn't take long.
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Joe Morton as Secretary of State Colin Powell in Stuff Happens at the National Theatre in London Photo by Ivan Kynckl

Just three weeks after David Hare’s headline-grabbing new play Stuff Happens opened at London’s National Theatre, news comes that the politically charged work will get its first Stateside reading. The event will happen in late October, Variety reported. Others details are to follow. The play opened on Sept. 10, one day before the three-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks, which led to the Bush administration's War on Terror and its decision to invade Iraq.

Nearly every major character in the Bush White House is depicted in Hare's political work. The full cast includes Adjoa Andoh as Condoleeza Rice, Desmond Barrit as Dick Cheney, Isla Blair as Laura Bush, Dermot Crowley as Donald Rumsfeld, Nicholas Farrell as Tony Blair, Alex Jennings as George W. Bush, Joe Morton as Colin Powell and Ian Gelder as Paul Wolfowitz. Nicholas Hytner directs at the Olivier Theatre, with designs by Christopher Oram, lighting by Paul Anderson and sound designs by Paul Groothuis.

The title comes from a phrase in a Donald Rumsfeld/Dick Cheney letter to President Clinton in 1998, which urged America to adopt a new global strategy that should include the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

The work was so anticipated that many London newspapers sent celebrity reporters to the first preview and soon after printed their reactions, thus eliciting the ire of the National.

 
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