Playwright David Hare had mixed feelings going into production of his play about the buildup to the Iraq war. “The power of theater is its unpredictability, the strange alchemy of response that happens only when a group of people examine something together. It’s a bad playwright who seeks to demand a particular reaction. Everyone knows that in performance unpleasant people may begin to acquire charm through energy. Good people, it is said, may seem dull. It was interesting how often members of the audience came out of the show saying “Goodness, I never knew that.” But even more often — and this is where theater really comes into its own — they emerged uneasy to have found their view of the leading players not quite the one they might have anticipated.”