Theater review
SOME GOOD MEN
Two hours and 30 minutes, with an intermission. At the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center, 150 West 65th St.
Can’t handle the truth?
In fact, the central problem with “A Few Good Men,” Aaron Sorkin’s 1989 play that was ceremonially performed at Lincoln Center, is that we can deal with the truth for a whole two and a half hours. The truth is revealed from the beginning, we recognize its extreme predictability, and then this truth is repeatedly discussed by the adjectives – sorry, the characters – all night.
Such is this musty old courtroom drama that is like a million others with its garrulous chatter and zero surprises. This is Sorkin at his finest, earning cheap applause breaks for important lines delivered like asteroid impacts.
Director Michael Arden’s huge revival has some good sequences and some good performances, but “A Few Good Men,” which opened Thursday night on Broadway, was never really a good play.
Of course, there are people who love a bunch of clichéd “objections” and Sorkin’s prodigious dialogue in which every character sounds the same – like the Minions did during their Stanford undergrad. The film version of “A Few Good Men” was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture and is fondly remembered for Jack Nicholson’s performance as Colonel Nathan Jessup.
Here, the fatigues are donned by Bradley Whitford, Josh from Sorkin’s “The West Wing,” who is one of the production’s highlights. The imposing Whitford naturally understands the writer’s rhythm, his clever humor and his curious talent for creating morons, as he should.
Looking like Lorne Michaels gone to boot camp, the actor is strong and convincing despite Sorkin turning the Navy officers (John Zdrojeski and Thom Sesma are the others) into “Muwhaha!” villains with no discernible human qualities. If Whitford’s Guantanamo Bay scenes seem like they came from Avatar, that makes sense. The original actor who played this role, Stephen Lang, went on to play Colonel Quaritch in these blue alien films.
At Guantanamo, Jessup commands two Marines, Louden Downey (Collin Kelly-Sordelet) and Harold Dawson (Lavel Schley making a sensational Broadway debut), who are on trial for the murder of Private William Santiago. The duo tied up the man and stuffed a cloth into his mouth, which turned out to be poisoned. But the dirty secret is that the crime was a “code red,” an unofficial hazing-like punishment that is an acceptable practice on the rank and file. They claim they were ordered to do so.
The main objective of the series is therefore to expose this conspiracy while accusing the unshakable hierarchy and the secret culture of the army. There’s not a single millisecond where you’re not sure where the story is going, and boy does it take a while to get there.
The accused men were assigned an attorney, Marine Lt. Daniel Kaffee. Arrogant and improvisatory, he is inexperienced and not the best option, which unfortunately the same could be said about the actor who plays him, Tom Blyth.
The 31-year-old Briton is known for films like “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” and “People We Meet on Vacation.” He’s great in those, heartthrob type, and on stage he has a natural charisma. But it’s just not a Broadway-caliber performance. He is uncomfortably hesitant and devoid of any gentleness, as if he were a trainee subway conductor. He jarringly adds a particular joke to force an eccentricity that doesn’t exist. Blyth seems frankly under-rehearsed, particularly in the second act’s trial scene, in which much of the cast was fooling around with abandon the night before the opening.
Kaffee describes himself and his two cohorts as “an arrogant fathead, a smart Jew, and a Harvard loudmouth,” and that’s really as deep as this thing can go.
As her legal cohort, Lt. Joanne Galloway — the brains of the operation until she accidentally wasn’t — Krysta Rodriguez is well-prepared, but there’s an artificiality and rigidity to everything she does that would be more at home in a musical or sit-com. Angry and unserious, she could almost be in “Ally McBeal”. Sorkin is also responsible for this, but Joanne never seems capable or intelligent. She’s just a typical 1980s neurotic. Sorkin likes to fight sexism while being a little sexist.
Rounding out the trio, Nick Blaemire is perfectly fine as their oddball third wheel, Lieutenant Sam Weinberg, but it’s never clear why he’s there. Even Sam is perplexed. He repeatedly mentions its apparent superfluity.
Speaking of superfluous, this is a huge sight. There’s a cast of 21 actors — the same size as the musical “MJ” — and talented designer Dane Laffrey of “The Lost Boys” and “Maybe Happy Ending” has transformed the Vivian Beaumont into a cavernous airplane hangar.
At times the scale is thrilling, particularly during movement choreographer Ricky Ubeda’s spellbinding military rituals. But when there are just three downtrodden lawyers in a small room trying to figure out their defense strategy or during a meat-and-potatoes courtroom scene, the intensity rises to the rafters.
That is, until the energizing Whitford came up with that famous speech and line: “You can’t handle the truth!” “.
But we’ve already done enough, thank you.
Gn entert
