AMERICAN THEATRE
July/August 2005
Exit Fervently
We can thank George W. Bush
for this, at least: that Gordon Davidson is not going quietly. To cap his
38-year reign as artistic director of the Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper
Forum in Los Angeles, Davidson first
mulled staging two classics in repertory. Then he heard the White House pitch
to reform Social Security.
"I said, 'This is WMD
all over again,' " Davidson recalls. "You put fear in people's mind
that you have a crisis, and then the next line is: 'I can solve it, but you
have to follow me.' "
So Davidson staged the play
he'd seen at London's National Theatre the previous fall, David Hare's Iraq-themed Stuff Happens, at the Taper June 5-July 17. Though it takes its
title from Donald Rumsfeld's infamous press-conference shrug about the post-war
looting of Baghdad, Hare's play portrays the run-up to the war, interpolating
finely culled firsthand accounts with imagined dialogue, particularly between
the wary, stolid Bush (played in L.A. by Keith Carradine); an eager, anxious
Tony Blair (Julian Sands); and, in the play's most sympathetic role, a
passionately conflicted Colin Powell (Tyrees Allen).
The result is akin
Shakespearean history play, Davidson says, particularly in its demands on his
22-member cast: "The actors are not standing outside: 'I'm not that guy,
I'm gonna show you that jerk.' They have to play it like they would play Henry
IV or Iago."
Davidson's career has often
been charged by political themes, from 1971's Vietnam protest play The Trial
of the Catonsville Nine, which drew
the unwanted attention of the FBI, to 1991's Angels in America, another National Theatre/Taper collaboration that
preempted Broadway. But how much can one play say, particularly to largely
liberal theatre-going audience? After all, the English and American leaders who
led the Iraq incursion have both been reelected, however narrowly, and there is
certainly no shortage of political coverage and debate in other media.
"I think it's worthwhile
being in a room to hear this, to experience it dramaticallyÑand dramatically
means also emotionally, which is very different from watching a
documentary," says Davidson. "Then together we're confronting the
issues of the reasons we went to war. I hope that people can enter this play through
many doors, whatever their political persuasion, and come out a different
door."
For his part, Davidson
couldn't have staged a better exit.
ÑRob Kendt