A seat in the war room in ACT's "Stuff Happens"

Shakespeare's observation that "All the world's a stage" underpins "Stuff Happens," the play currently transforming an ACT Theatre stage into a world on the verge of a hotly debated, long-raging war.

Sir David Hare's controversial drama, a New York and London hit that has its Northwest premiere at ACT Theatre tonight under the direction of Victor Pappas, is a semifictionalized account of the backstage maneuvers that led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, spearheaded by the U.S. and Great Britain. The play's dramatis personae are, in the main, the real global movers and shakers who engineered the war, or lobbied against it — from U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to U.N. inspector Hans Blix and France's foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin.

Rarely does a playwright have the audacity, or even the ambition, to depict such a complex skein of real political events in such detail. Usually star investigative journalists or historians are the ones who record or speculate on what happened in the heat of crisis, in the corridors and conference rooms of power.

And rarely do stage actors have the loaded task of portraying newsmakers whose faces, voices and famous utterances have so saturated the mass media.

Imagining reality

In a local exclusive interview last year, Hare spoke about the high-impact events that unfold in his "Stuff Happens" script. "I didn't embroider, I imagined. Nobody who wasn't there knows what happened behind closed doors. I've speculated about it ... but my speculations are very well-sourced, from multiple sources."

Hare has kept some sources confidential, while implying they included Americans and Brits privy to upper-echelon government dealings with Iraq.

On one level, "Stuff Happens" (initially produced in London in 2004, but reworked for a 2006 run at New York's Public Theatre) gives a detailed chronology of newsworthy events.

The timeline kicks in on Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists attacked New York's Twin Towers and other American targets. It moves on to the search by U.N. inspectors for weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the backroom sparring of international diplomats, and the fraught White House debates between pro-war advocates such as Vice President Dick Cheney and then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and skeptics such as then-Secretary of State Colin Powell. (The play's title quotes then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's offhand comment on looting in post-invasion Baghdad.)

But Hare primarily views "Stuff Happens" in Shakespearean terms. The central subject, he insists, isn't Iraq, but how a confluence of ideologies, global power maneuvers and strong personalities can spur war.

"This happens to be a slice of great Shakespearean history that is completely contemporary and helps people to discuss what's happening in their country now," Hare emphasized.

"If you want to know what happened with Blair, and Bush and Powell and company, and you want to get it all in one evening, you have to go to the play. And to be a good play, it has to be both a historical overview and a work of imagination."

Acting history

Pappas is leading the ACT cast through his own imagined version of events Hare outlines in dozens of short scenes.

The actors were not chosen for their physical resemblances to the famous figures they portray, says Pappas, a former associate artistic head of Intiman Theatre. He does not want "impersonations" but the actors to "create these characters from the inside out. That way we don't risk making these people into caricatures, and the play into a burlesque."

Yes, R. Hamilton Wright's Bush sports a Texas drawl. And Mark Chamberlin's Blair has a British accent. But Pappas notes, "What they need to make us understand is why a certain individual presents this or that point of view, and how badly they want to achieve their goals."

Another key factor for Pappas is making the in-the-round Allen Theatre at ACT work to the play's advantage. (In New York and at London's National Theatre, "Stuff Happens" was staged in other configurations.)

"Our space is wonderful, and very immediate, because it makes you feel like you're sitting in the Roman senate, or in a Greek theater," Pappas says. "It feels like you are part of a community that is observing a trial or a public debate.

"And since the actors move around a lot, the audience keeps getting different views and perspectives."

Real? Or real enough?

There will be patrons, no doubt, who'll scrutinize "Stuff Happens" for biases of Hare's own political perspective (he opposed the Iraq war). And some who may expect a realistic portrait of the men and sole woman (former U.S. national-security adviser and now Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice) who defied, endorsed and/or carried out President Bush's decision to lead the charge into Iraq. (There are other, entirely fictional roles in the play, representing Iraqi points of view.)

One London newspaper, The Guardian, actually published pro-and-con reactions to "Stuff Happens" by such in-the-know figures as Robin Cook, who resigned his post as British foreign secretary to protest the war.

But four years after the play's debut, there may also be some who question the value of reliving, or reimagining, events that are yesterday's news.

For Pappas, "Stuff Happens" is still relevant today — and could remain so years from now.

He points out that the Iraq war, which has so far resulted in the deaths of 3,500 American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, continues, "and we don't know when or how it will end. So to go back and look at how we got into this, is an electrifying experience.

"But we also get a look at the ways things have happened throughout history. Watching this play, you feel you've been allowed behind closed doors, to take in the machinations of power that we otherwise would never see."

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com