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ChilesAuthor(s): Gordon ThompsonSource: The North American Review, Vol. 290, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 2005), p. 45Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25127490 .

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Stuff Happens has twenty-four scenes; within them, many other sharp, rapidly

paced juxtapositions are stage metaphors for the headlong rush of political

activity that created momentum for

ill-conceived plans. The audience, like

the nation before it, is in danger of

being carried away in the rush, so Hare

will interrupt the flow and distort

chronology to flesh out the record:

An Actor: On September 7th 2003, the President reveals that the

reconstruction of Iraq which

Wolfowitz has said will be?

Wolfowitz: Self-financing. An Actor: ?will, in fact, cost at

least?

Bush: Eighty-seven billion dollars.

Phrases since repeated into abstract

airiness are restored to contexts for our

examination. While Bush likes "axis of

evil" because "it just kind of resonates," the French characterize his language as

"simplistic," and a British official calls it

"jejune." Rumsfeld endorses Bush's early use of "war on terror": "That's good.

That's vague." Tony Blair, the pragmatic time-server in Hare's view, insists that a

"real and imminent" threat appear to be

backed by "evidence."

Beginning with a 1960s retrospective, Stuff Happens lays the moral basis for

the credibility of its American actors; Powell's authority is enhanced by his

service during the Vietnam War while

Cheney "had other priorities ... than

military service." Hans Blix, Condy Rice, Hugh Blair, Kofi Annan, Rumsfeld

and finally Bush step forward in turn,

speaking for themselves after being introduced by An Actor. As a result, we

will judge their recent discourse and

ethos in the context of a longer history. To include the French and other key

figures with less political clout, Hare

created over fifty speaking parts, each

given measured due. He put none of

the president's outrageous verbal blun

ders in his character's mouth; Keith

Carradine, far from a Bush look-alike

to begin with, acted the character not

the caricature. As a result, we were not

distracted from the ideas into superior or escapist laughter. As Rumsfeld, Dermot Crowley looked like a cross

between him and Robert MacNamara, and as Powell, Joe Morton often shout

ed in private meetings in contrast to

the reserved demeanor of the public man. Julian Sands as Tony Blair

evoked the man as we know him from

newscasts; he, like Powell, stood on

slippery middle ground, at one point

rolling his eyes to his staff while on the

phone to an uncooperative Bush. The

play's movement paused at a few points as a British Journalist, a Palestinian

Activist, and an Iraqi Exile held the stage alone to express summary judgments.

The Iraqi had the final speech and left us in the present moment. '"Stuff

Happens,'" he says, "is the most racist

remark I had ever heard," and address

ing fellow Iraqis concludes the play: "If

you don't [take charge yourselves], this

is what you get." The "this is" has

become only worse since Hare wrote his

play, one that can be read with enlight enment and seen with deep dismay.

All the action of Brian Friel's latest

play, The Home Place, takes place on the

"unkempt lawn" outside the substantial

home of Christopher Gore, one of the

landed Protestant gentry in Ireland.

Friel compresses the action to one day in 1878; in 1879, the Land War that

ruthlessly dispossessed tenant farmers

broke out when, as R. F. Foster says in

his authoritative Modern Ireland, "Landed power became the crucial

issue." At the opening,

Christopher is attending a

memorial for a neighbor, Lord

Lifford, who was killed on his

way "to oversee the eviction of

one of his tenants." Christopher himself may recognize his

tenants by sight, but he

doesn't know their names.

Christopher's brother, Richard, is a houseguest while he

pursues a project of anthropo

metry, the literal measurement

of physical characteristics of

ethnic groups to determine their specific differences from

humanity in general?"genetic

imperialism" as one commen

tator puts it. Indeed, Richard

confides to Christopher's son,

David, that if his project could

break the "ethnic code [.?] We wouldn't control just an

empire. We would rule the

entire universe." Richard's

assistant, combination gofer

and gentleman's gentleman,

parrots his master's commands,

and both, despite Richard's

patronizing arrogance, are no more than

social constructs; one stage direction notes that both play roles and enjoy

doing so. They assume, of course, that

their roles will impress all the Irish they meet into respect or subservience.

Con Doherty will have none of Richard's superior attitude or his

project. Con comes out of the trees in

the first moments of the play but

shrinks back out of sight when he sees

his cousin, Margaret. She has been

listening to a distant choir sing Thomas

Moore's "Oft in the Stilly Night," a

lament for lost time and dead friends.

She, an exile in her own country because

of her ties to the Gores, will mouth the

song's words at the play's ending in a

dumb assertion of values no longer hers.

The offstage choir is conducted by

Margaret's father, Clement O'Donnell, a

character close to stereotype for his

drinking and inflated diction. Friel

shrewdly uses the type to expose Richard's cultural limitations. The

Englishman with his measuring devices

doesn't realize that he is outmatched by an uneducated man with deeper values.

Clement, ever deferential, points out

that the composer of the song was a

friend of "your Lord Byron"; Richard

GORDON THOMPSON

Chiles

Size matters. Big ones

have nothing to prove,

small ones make you scream.

Shapes: scimitar,

cigar, canine, claw,

punching bag, bombshell.

Vegetable landmines,

siphoning sunlight into flameless fire,

tongue-detonated.

Trojan capsules spew seed-bombs past the mouth-gate.

November-December 2005 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW 45

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