Jennings & Morton Set for Hare's Stuff Happens
The American Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld's famous response to the looting of Baghdad, at a press conference on April 11, 2003, provides the title for a new play, specially written for the Olivier Theatre, about the extraordinary process leading up to the invasion of Iraq. From events that have dominated international headlines for the last two years, Hare has fashioned both a historical narrative and a human drama about the frustrations of power and the limits of diplomacy.
Jennings won the Olivier Award for Best Comedy Performance in 1988 for his performance in Too Clever by Half. He was nominated for that award again in 1989 for playing Dorante in The Liar. Jennings won another Olivier Award, this time for Best Actor, for Peer Gynt at the Royal Shakespeare Company RSC. His other RSC credits include A Midsummer Night's Dream which he also starred in on Broadway, Measure for Measure, Much Ado About Nothing and Hamlet. He received the 2001 Evening Standard Award for Best Actor for his performances in The Winter's Tale and The Relapse. Jennings also starred as Henry Higgins in the recent West End production of My Fair Lady.
Morton earned a 1974 Theatre World Award and a Tony nomination for his star turn in the musical Raisin. His other Broadway credits include Two Gentlemen of Verona, Oh, Brother!, Honky Tonk Nights and Art. His film credits include Paycheck, Ali, Dragonfly, Bounce, What Lies Beneath, The Astronaut's Wife, Blues Brothers 2000, Speed, Executive Decision, Terminator 2, Forever Young, Of Mice and Men, Brother From Another Planet, City of Hope and Lone Star.
Stuff Happens will also feature Adjoa Andoh as Condoleezza Rice, Desmond Barrit as Dick Cheney, Isla Blair as Laura Bush and others, Dermot Crowley as Donald Rumsfeld, Tim Donoghue as Paul O'Neill and Jean-David Levitte, Robert Easr as Sir Richard Dearlove, Nicholas Farrell as Tony Blair, Don Gallagher as various characters, Ian Gelder as Paul Wolfowitz, Raeda Ghazelah as a Palestinian academic, Ewan Hooper as Hans Blix, Alan Leith as Jeremy Greenstock, Kevork Malikyan as Spook and Lavrov, Iain Mitchell as Jack Straw, Sara Powell as an FO official, Philip Quast as George Tenet, J. Negroponte and Maurice Gourdalt-Montagne, Raad Rawi as an Iraqi exile, Nick Sampson as Dominque De Villepin and Jonathan Powell, Larrington Walker as Kofi Annan and Angus Wright as David Manning and an angry British journalist. The show is scheduled to officially open on September 10.