By contrast, Tony Blair is seen satirically: the hints of a moral crusader are there, but in Nicholas Farrell's performance, he emerges largely as a demented egoist obsessed by his own political standing. There may be some truth in this, but the play would be stronger if Hare admitted that Blair may have been propelled by idealistic motives. They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things, and that's what's going to happen there.

Scene 17: Iraq inspectors commit to produce a full description of their chemical facilities. Saddam won't admit that he has the deadly weapons that the UN are looking for. There is controversy in Britain because some people believe that the Britain should be able to help the U.S. and some say that they should wait. Blair has no idea what his further actions are because Saddam wasn't any help and Blair has to keep calling Bush. [2] 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. 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."The part of the record that always resonated most strongly with me didn’t make it into Hare’s script. While testifying to Congress just before the war began, Wolfowitz dismissed the notion that it would take more troops to stabilize Iraq than to defeat it. “Hard to imagine,” he said. In fact, no imagination whatsoever was needed to read those projections; even if it had been, it’s the least we ask of our leaders. Those three horrible little words tell you the whole story of how a failure of mind, a collapse of the intellect, let the war go so badly awry. They’re why we should demand more from Hare’s play than he has provided. And it's untidy, and freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. However, the pleasure lies in seeing recent history, in which we all have a stake, enacted on Britain's most prominent public stage. Nicholas Hytner's production is also elegant and unfussy, with the cast seated on stage throughout and emerging, as required, to enact their part in the drama. And, in a vast cast, there are standout performances from Desmond Barrit as an ideologically-driven Cheney, Dermot Crowley as an assertive Rumsfeld, and Adjoa Andoh as an ice-cold Condoleezza Rice. Stuff Happens was first performed at the National Theatre in London on 1 September 2004 in a production directed by Nicholas Hytner When it comes to clothing relationship counselling, Emma outlines a host of gentle processes that will help you ascertain whether you want to keep certain items of clothing or if it is time to say goodbye, from rotating your wardrobe to Irish stylist Annmarie O’Connor’s ‘body scan’.

Once it becomes clear that Bush has decided on war, then there is a powerful incentive for those around him to find a rationale for the coming conflict that they can live with. After all, they can’t dissuade this man. As Swift’s wonderful aphorism puts it, which is attached as an epigraph to the play: “It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.” This advice isn’t about denying yourself anything,” she declares. “It’s about being more mindful in your shopping. It’s about enhancing your enjoyment around it. Sustainability has been framed within the language of deprivation for so long; what I’m saying is, ‘I’m trying to make you enjoy your life more’.” Yet the disconnect from reality, the complete misunderstanding of what is going on in the country and what the United States (and, to a much lesser extent, its military allies) wrought on display here is, in a way, misleading. Emma's husband Danny makes a number of appearances in the book and she says that the Dannyisms have been a real hit with readers. One particular anecdote which launched an assault on my emotions was when Emma recounted how her husband turned to her one night while they were in bed and he said out of the blue that he thought it was really special that the Harry Potter book he was reading belonged to her. Knowing that much, an intelligent skeptic might wonder whether a dramatist could have anything substantive to add to the mountain of analysis already in print. The concept of this play, particularly as it is the product of a renowned left-wing English playwright, will lead some to expect an exercise in propaganda. But such skeptics are wrong in their assumptions. Stuff Happens is much more than a way to sugar the pill of political history for a complacent audience. Nor is its anti-war stance in any way reflexive or predictable.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] Scene 15: Powell meets with some members of the UN to discuss Iraq and Saddam. De Villepin thinks that the U.S. decided on the process to invade Iraq without coming up with the purpose for it. The U.S. have been leaving out other countries when it comes to their decisions for the last two years so the rest of the UN are cautious when it comes to making plans with the U.S. The French will help the U.S. if their goal is to disarm Saddam but won't help if the goal is to fully invade Iraq. [2]

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.)

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For now, the playwright has done well for giving the public persona of Dubya an added and unforeseen dimension, even if Stuff Happens remains too hidebound by recent history to make the imaginative leap into art." - The Economist In an Author's Note David Hare writes that Stuff Happens"is surely a play, not a documentary", an almost necessary reminder given how many of the lines repeat words spoken by the actual, historical actors, words that ring very familiar. Spearheaded by Marie Kondo, an army of organisers, declutterers and life-sorters have sold millions (and millions) of books which purport to unleash the minimalist within. Yet for all the practical guides on how to strategise clearouts and win against the battle of stuff, few manuals truly get to the root of the matter.

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." The real figures make the familiar statements, but there are also some (believable) behind-the-scenes recreations. Hare certainly makes Colin Powell a more heroic figure than he deserves to be; a voice of wisdom and restraint, Hare ultimately can't completely reconcile what he's built up with Powell's complicity in events, especially in the infamous and outrageous speech before the United Nations that ultimately destroyed any credibility he may have had left.Finally a very strong point of society’s perception of the events is given by an Iraqi exile at the end of the book. The Iraqi even admits to hating Saddam Hussein by saying “I even longed for the fall of the dictator”, but the comment that Donald Rumsfeld totally changed his perception of things. He shows this by bringing up the way the Americans who died are counted and given an honorary ceremony but the Iraqi’s are unaccounted for. This shows how the war was totally unfair and that they considered the Iraqis not to be human. Getting started on the practicalities of a decluttering project should always mean starting small, says Gleeson.