Welcome to a very dysfunctional family brought together by imminent death. Three sisters, Agnes, Theresa and Louise, assembled to care for their dying mother, reveal their insecurities, variances in memories of events and, most of all, hostility to each other.

Each of the three is deeply flawed, filled with resentment and hiding from the world in her own way. Agnes had escaped from the Cape Breton home by going west to begin an unsuccessful acting career in Toronto, drinking her way into oblivion — as her mother had done while the girls were growing up. Theresa, the “good” middle sister, is literally cloistered from the world since she became a nun, but is now in the midst of a crisis of faith. Meanwhile, the youngest sibling, Louise — officially regarded as the strange one — stayed at home. Her safety net is daytime television and a love of automobiles.

To add to the strain of the renewed togetherness among the three, their father wants to see them. Divorced from their mother long ago, he is now aphasic and living with a very young partner (and, as the girls find out, another man who is assumed to be her lover). …

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There’s a moment in the National Arts Centre’s worthy production of David Hare’s controversial docudrama, Stuff Happens, when the Bush administration’s determination to launch war against Iraq shows its true, frightening colours.

It comes in a confrontation between U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney and Hans Blix, the Swedish diplomat whose UN team has found no evidence in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq of the weapons of mass destruction that are purported to threaten world peace.

Blix, in David Warburton’s excellent portrayal, is the courtly Scandinavian, whose own integrity will never provide the Bush regime with the false pretext it needs for going to war. But in Cheney, he’s confronting a smug thug who — in Paul Rainville’s entirely believable characterization — is pursuing his own bully agenda. So we have Cheney, secure in his faith in American exceptionalism, warning Blix that the U.S. will not hesitate to discredit the UN weapons inspectors if they don’t support Washington’s own dubious intelligence regarding weaponry that ultimately proves to be non-existent. …

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Anyone who felt a frisson of dread at President Obama’s request to Congress to authorize military force against ISIS should see this powerful production of British playwright David Hare’s “Stuff Happens.”  Originally produced in London in 2004 and in New York in 2006, Mr. Hare uses a fascinating mix of public record information, documented details and theatrical invention to chronicle the events leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.  Twelve years on it has suddenly become frighteningly relevant.

The ensemble cast is exceptionally strong.  Unfortunately I have neither time nor space to mention them all.  The major players are all there.  George W. Bush is ably played by Stuart Hughes who, although physically different, captures Bush’s cocky belligerence. He’s surrounded by Greg Malone as the diabolical Donald Rumsfeld in an almost over the top performance that somehow works and the excellent Paul Rainville as the volatile Dick Chaney.  My companion commented that in the final scene he perfectly captured Cheney’s gleeful fat-cattishness.  It’s fascinating watching those two, along with Andy Massingham as an appropriately scary Paul Wolfowitz, manipulate Bush onto their chosen path toward invasion. …

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A documentary, enhanced by imagined conversations and dramatic licence, David Hare’s Stuff Happens follows the path that led to the Iraq war in 2003.

The play premiered in 2004, one year after the invasion of Iraq by the U.S. Hare’s analysis focuses on the theory that “Iraq was essentially a war of opportunism.” The official rationale for the attack was that Iraq held weapons of mass destruction (not proven) that posed an immediate threat to the western world. The collateral damage/more likely reason for the attack was to overthrow and execute the dictator, Saddam Hussein.

Stuff Happens presents much of the story of the negotiations and lead-up to the war by quoting President George W. Bush and members of his administration. Hare also includes such imagined, but likely, private conversations between U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair and between U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Punctuated with constant reminders that the justification for going to war was flimsy, Stuff Happens is a discomforting — though often amusing — account that aims to put the main players and events in perspective. …

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When words are the primary currency, a play about the protagonist’s loss of words is destined to be a major challenge.

Add to this the continuing parallelism between black holes in the cosmos and the jumble in the brain of an aphasic patient and the problems associated with Susan Yankowitz’s 1991 play Night Sky are multiplied.

She apparently wrote the script as a tribute to her mentor (and the director of the premiere in New York) Joseph Chaikin, who suffered aphasia following a stroke during open-heart surgery. He imposed three conditions on her script: that the heroine should be a woman; the aphasia should be the result of a car accident [big bang?] and that Night Sky should focus on astronomy.

Yankowitz complied and the result is almost a how-to manual for family and friends responding to someone with aphasia. Worthy as this may be, it is somewhat low in entertainment value, even if the brain and the cosmos are the last two remaining mysteries in the universe, as scientist Stephen Hawking claimed.

The Kanata Theatre production, directed by Alain Chamsi, appropriately sets the scene with a series of shots of the night sky. The return to earth is less successful. It begins at the tail end of a lecture by astronomy professor, Anna (Tania Carrière) — standing behind a lectern that looks as though it could stand a coat of paint. …

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