BUSH LEAGUE KEITH CARRADINE DOES W FOR 'STUFF HAPPENS'.

Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Writer

Given 15 minutes with the president of the United States, Keith Carradine would probably chat about steroids and asterisks. And that would constitute valuable research.

``As soon as you start to talk about weighty things, then the essence kind of gets clouded over by a representation,'' says Carradine. ``So I think I'd be more interested in talking to him about baseball or something and just try to get a picture of who that guy is.''

Understand, Carradine has spent the past couple of months practically living with President George W. Bush - through his own readings and observations and through the heavy research of playwright David Hare, whose ``Stuff Happens'' chronicles the diplomatic events leading up to the start of the Iraq War in 2003.

The play's dialogue is a combination of recorded statements from the likes of Tony Blair, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and George Tenet and speculative behind-the-scenes encounters based on Hare's research. Carradine plays Bush. The play has its American premiere this afternoon at the Mark Taper Forum.

President Bush figures prominently in the action, certainly, but he's one of many key players, and the president - while getting a lot of stage time - falls largely silent in the second act. A total of 22 actors play 96 characters ranging from cabinet figures to journalists, international politicians to exiles.

Not that the scope of Hare's canvas or the sheer number of characters makes Carradine's work any easier. A character who chooses his words carefully - particularly one who is as famously selective as Bush - isn't necessarily the easiest person to get to know, much less portray.

``I think it's glib and a little bit naive to sit back and say, 'The man's an idiot. He's a clown, and everything's being done by the people around him.' I think that's underestimating him,'' says Carradine. ``And one of the challenges for me as an actor is to try to reflect that in the performance I give while at the same time conjuring up certain aspects of his personality, his physicality, his occasional mangling of the English language, but at the same time, underneath that, re-enforce what I believe. Which is he's just not that dumb.''

Hence the actor's stated interest in an encounter with the collegial, everyday Bush rather than a scripted sit-down to talk affairs of state.

``My brother Bobby met him when he was running in 2000,'' Carradine continues. ``and he said (Bush) really just kind of catches you off guard. He seemed like a regular dude. I guess that's who he's always been, someone who you wanted to go out and get drunk with. He was fun.''

``He's the fellah next door. He's the fellah you want to have over for pot roast. Of course, then the trouble is getting him to leave ...''

Yes, that was a zing, the likes of which the cast and creative team of ``Stuff Happens'' have kept to a minimum during the production's creation. The play, while humorous in places, is not intended as a satire. Presented instead as an attempt to lay out the events and call matters into question, ``Stuff Happens'' - if it does its job correctly - should have Bush administration supporters and detractors alike convinced that Hare is in their camp, according to Carradine.

The president is introduced in a scene titled ``The Actors'' as ``a snappish young man, seeking his fortune in the oil-rich Permian Basin of West Texas who will one day, like 46 percent of his fellow Americans, say he has been born again. ... The elder son of a Kennebunkport dynasty, George W. Bush is considered the joke of the family beside his more favored brother Jeb. He only enters politics at the age of 47.''

But as the play develops, Carradine contends that the issues of the current conflict become cloudy. The play doesn't condemn or give answers, he says.

``What I was delighted by as I read it was that it struck me as a fairly even-handed look at events at a moment in history,'' says Carradine. ``I didn't feel I was going to be diving in to participate in some political screed that was designed to present one side or another sort of irrefutably. Mr. Hare has presented very eloquent moments throughout the piece that speak to the opposition of whatever the moment in the play might be.''

``Stuff Happens'' represents Carradine's first time back on stage stage since his Tony-nominated turn as cowboy humorist Will Rogers in 1992's ``The Will Rogers Follies.'' His nearly 95 film and TV roles include a spate of Western legends, including Rogers (in ``Follies'' and ``Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle''), Buffalo Bill Cody (``Wild Bill'') and Wild Bill Hickok (in a recent slate of ``Deadwood'' episodes). He won an Oscar for the song ``I'm Easy'' from Robert Altman's ``Nashville.''

He considers live theater ``kind of an addiction you have to find a way to pay for.'' The decision to join the ``Stuff Happens'' team was, given the play's pedigree and subject matter, ``a no-brainer.''

``Actors like myself, we'll go and do our television movies, our miniseries. We'll do whatever we can to sock away enough bread to be able to once in a while take three months and go back to the theater,'' says Carradine. ``When you get handed something like this, it's perfect.''

The second of John Carradine's acting sons (half-brother David Carradine is the oldest), Keith Carradine, 55, proclaims himself to be ``not a political activist.'' Generally speaking, he says he finds himself more in line with former President Clinton's policies than with Bush's.

In that regard, he lines up with the majority of the ``Stuff Happens'' cast.

``Are there any neoconservatives among us? No - and I don't know if that's good or bad,'' says director Gordon Davidson. ``Given the point of view of the play, as represented by this company, we might seem to be all on the same page (politically). First and foremost, we want the story told.''

Evan Henerson, [phone]

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

STUFF HAPPENS

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

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

Tickets: $34 to $52. [phone]; www.taperahmanson.com.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1) Keith Carradine on President Bush

John McCoy/Staff Photographer

(2) Keith Carradineportrays the president, including his donning of a flight suit to announce the end of major combat in Iraq, in ``Stuff Happens.''