Get Out for the 4th: Stuff Happens @ ACT

If kaboom-style fireworks aren't the bang you're looking for, stop in at ACT for the theatrical fireworks of David Hare's Stuff Happens, reviewed here. It's the play about Iraq and the rockets' red glare, the difference between the spark of liberty and the blinding torch of neocon ideology. (The title refers to Donald Rumsfeld's disingenuous retort to questions about U.S. forces' disregard of post-"liberation" lawlessness.) By all accounts, it's a thought-provoking (almost 3-hour) imagining of what it was like being "in the room" as the decisions were being made, and confronts us with the outcome of those decisions, ready or not.

Recalling that while the U.S. war for independence started in 1775/76, its conclusion wasn't reached until September 1783 at the Treaty of Paris, we can't help but wonder how the play written in 1780 would have described the Founding Fathers -- patriots or false prophets?

7:30pm // ACT // Tickets $50

Photo by Chris Bennion: (left to right) R. Hamilton Wright (George W. Bush) and Michael Winters (Dick Cheney)