`STUFF HAPPENS' A POLITICAL `MISSION ACCOMPLISHED'.

Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Critic

THE CHARACTER of Condoleezza Rice (played by Lorraine Toussaint) was summarily hissed at when she was introduced during a scene titled ``The Actors.'' As were Dick Cheney (Dakin Matthews), Donald Rumsfeld (John Michael Higgins) and - to be expected - President George W. Bush (Keith Carradine). The tone was set before the chairs were warm at David Hare's play ``Stuff Happens.'' And that tone was decidedly anti-U.S. involvement in Iraq, anti-Bush administration.

A resounding ``hurrah!'' to the hearty and demonstrative crowds who can make opening nights at our major playhouses so very memorable. Leave it to the vocal peanut gallery to deliver the obligatory standing ovation, the hisses and the cheers that ``Stuff Happens'' - a by-no-means-neutral play - proclaims not to be courting but probably is. They (make that we) hissed and tsk-ed at the villains and made our appreciation known whenever a character (Colin Powell, French politician Dominique de Villepin) took a stand against the administration's snowballing path to war.

Might a faction have applauded with equal enthusiasm had anyone representing the cause for war offered an equally well-reasoned, impassioned or compelling argument? We'll never know, since Hare's play doesn't spin that way. ``Stuff Happens'' is not a diatribe, exactly. (Heaven help the Bushies if Tony Kushner has a U.S.-vs.-Iraq play on the boiler.) But it's hardly an unbiased docudrama, either. If Hare is looking to tell a lively story, then - as the celebrated banner over the USS Abraham Lincoln proclaimed 42 days after the military campaign - Mission Accomplished.

After character introductions are dispensed with, the play gets under way, starting just before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Hare shows us how the Bush administration turned its attention away from Osama bin Laden and toward Iraq, detailing how our country ran afoul of the French and the British en route to war. Duplicity, blind ignorance and - above all - arrogance appear to have been the administration's driving force.

``Stuff's'' American premiere, directed by Gordon Davidson at the Mark Taper Forum, is certainly kinetic. Staged with a spit-and-polish briskness that the military would envy, the production offers one of the strongest - and largest - casts in recent memory. When you can plug performers the caliber of Francis Guinan, Stephen Spinella and John Vickery into an assortment of smaller roles, clearly you're dealing from a strong deck.

Those 22 actors - 18 of them men, and all wearing dark suits - spread themselves around the deco black austerity of Ming Cho Lee's set. They assemble conference tables, take seats and stride purposefully up to microphones. They are as believably who they represent as Hare and Davidson allow them to be. A historical account with as much built-in drama as this one contains may not actually need clearly defined white and black hats, but Hare clearly thinks otherwise.

Accordingly, the closest thing ``Stuff Happens'' has to a heroic figure is Tyrees Allen's Powell, who squirms and fumes and delivers an impassioned speech to Bush and Rice, concluding, ``I want my country to be less arrogant. I want us to go about this a different way.'' On the other end of ``Stuff's'' love-'em-or-hate-'em spectrum, you've got Matthews' sour-faced Cheney, who can't utter a syllable without revealing a petty or nasty-minded agenda, or Higgins' Rumsfeld - all twerpiness and toadiness. Not that we shouldn't have expected anything less. These ``players'' have been introduced as ``a towel-snapper'' (Rumsfeld) and an uncompromising draft dodger (Cheney).

As the president, Carradine doesn't go the simpleton route, even though the play might let him get away with doing so. Bush spends more of ``Stuff Happens'' listening than talking, encouraging others to air the issue before stepping in and making a decision. His performance certainly makes the case that forces far greater than a nation's leader were at work leading us to war.

Based on a combination of documented on-the-record statements and speculative behind-closed-doors encounters, ``Stuff Happens'' dutifully spurs thought and outrage.

Evan Henerson, [phone]

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

STUFF HAPPENS - Three stars

Where: Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles.

When: 8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 2:30 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday; through July 17.

Tickets: $34 to $52. [phone].

In a nutshell: U.S. vs. Iraq redux with the administration coming off looking like war-hungry idiots.

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Photo:

(color) Julian Sands, left, is British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Keith Carradine is President Bush in ``Stuff Happens,'' which met with great approval from a left-leaning opening-night audience.