David Hare's STUFF HAPPENS will play The Public

[melissa errico fan]

Posted: 12/16/05 at 5:53pm

It takes the place of Anna Deavere Smith's Let Me Down Easy, which has been moved to next season.
http://www.theatermania.com/content/news.cfm/story/7324

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 12/16/05 at 6:15pm

I saw the all-star reading of it at NY Theatre Workshop last year with Len Cariou, Arliss Howard, Wallace SHawn, Debra Winger etc and was quite underhwhelmed. Hare's play is mostly straight reportage of the run-up to the Iraqi War consisting of verbatim quotes from news sources, plus some closed door conversations of Hare's invention. There was little in the way of authorial perspective or point of view in the writing -- it's mostly a "just the facts" recitation of the all the major events from various perspectives.

Basically, if you've been reading the paper and watching the news regularly for the past 4 years, there's nothing new or illuminating in this play. Most of the NYC critical faculty was there, as well as other theatre VIPS and at the end of this three hour, exposition-heavy presentation, there seemed to be a collective shrugging of the shoulders as everyone shuffled out into the night. I was thoroughly unimpressed by it.