The Road to War

If I'm in New York anytime soon, I'll have to go and check out the stage show "Stuff Happens". Although, I don't know why I would be in New York anytime soon, considering I've never been and don't have plans to be in the near future. From the New York Times review:

The play now seems less an arrogant, animated history book with a fixed agenda than a fluid public speculation — a collective work of imagination that attempts to grasp how and why an unnecessary and unwinnable war was allowed to happen. The first-rate cast members — who notably include Jay O. Sanders as President Bush, Peter Francis James as Colin Powell and Gloria Reuben as Condoleezza Rice — become the audience's investigative agents. There's a new Brechtian distance between player and part, though in the cases of Mr. James and Ms. Reuben, the performances are also steeped in warmly insightful empathy that lends the production a concrete (as opposed to abstract) humanity.

I don't have to summarize the plot for you, do I? "Stuff Happens" charts the staff meetings (at the White House and at No. 10 Downing Street), closed-door conferences, public addresses, and backdoor diplomacy and betrayals that led to the American-spearheaded invasion of Iraq. Some of the material (including its title, famously uttered by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld about looting in newly liberated Baghdad) is taken directly from transcripts of press conferences, United Nations assemblies and television interviews.

No, you don't need to summarize the plot. I've got it, I've had it since the beginning, and fortunately the rest of the country seems to be finally catching on.

David Hare's 'Stuff Happens': All the President's Men in 'On the Road to Baghdad'