A Few Good Movie Memories Overshadow Aaron Sorkin’s Broadway Revival

Movies are memories, dreams captured on celluloid and lit up on a screen. We can learn them by heart, comforted by their repetition.Plays are living beings that evolve from night to night. They lack the reassuring familiarity of films but they can have the spark of glory, inspiration and even disaster in them.I thought about this when I saw Lincoln Center Theater’s revival of “A Few Good Men” at the Vivian Beaumont last week. I thought about how sorting truth from different storytellers is at the heart of the search depicted in the play. As the production unfolded, while I was well aware “A Few Good Men” began life on stage, I had to go on a small journey of my own, filtering out my vivid and unchanging memory of the 1992 film version to fairly judge this new performance.“A Few Good Men” is still the tale of power and command, of ideals tested under the fire of reality, of the war between aspiration and brutality that men strive to navigate.And in moments when it becomes its own unique production, the play — directed in the new revival by Michael Arden — soars on its own merits. But too often it is a pastiche of Rob Reiner’s classic movie, unable to break free of the legacy of Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson and an iconic, inalterable picture. A work which itself transformed its source material, the original Broadway version of the play written by Aaron Sorkin and first staged in 1989.In the play, it’s 1986 at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Windward, and a “substandard” Marine named Private First Class William Santiago (Daniel Velez) is brutally hazed and killed. The Judge Advocate General’s Corps dispatches Lt. Commander Joanne Galloway (Krysta Rodriguez) and Lt. Junior Grade Daniel Kaffee (Tom Blyth) to defend the two Marines charged with Santiago’s murder.Santiago’s hazing and death is depicted much more graphically in this production of the play than on film, with strobe lights illuminating his harrowing last struggles. Mr. Velez as Santiago occasionally appears on the railing of the air traffic control tower that dominates stage left, making an appeal from the afterlife as he narrates his pleas to be transferred away from the base where he is tormented.The play is a marvel of complex staging that opens the production up almost as much as a film. The set construction and lighting design are both stellar, transforming the stage into mundane quarters ranging from Jessep’s office, a locker room, and the lawyers’ conference room to an aircraft hangar complete with sounds of fighter jets streaking overhead. Krysta Rodriguez and Tom Blyth in ‘A Few Good Men.’ Emilio MadridWith just a few lighting changes, the stage shifts locations, so the play never seems closed off or limited to a bare setup of tables and chairs. It certainly helps that the Lincoln Center Theater is cavernous, accommodating numerous set pieces staged with precision. During the trial scenes, the courtroom set — complete with a judge’s bench that rises from the floor — is oriented so that the audience serves as the jury. And we receive head-on the appeals to justice from Kaffee and the disdain from Colonel Jessep.The parallel journeys of Lt. Kaffee and Col. Jessep are more cleanly realized in this production than in the movie. Col. Jessep is not quite the co-lead of the play, but he does have more time in the spotlight than Mr. Nicholson’s Jessep did.One of the only questions anyone wants to know about this play must be: how does Bradley Whitford compare to Jack Nicholson? He doesn’t. He can’t. Could anyone?Mr. Whitford’s Jessep (a Lieutenant Colonel in the play, a full bird Colonel in the film), is a little wearier and a little angrier than Mr. Nicholson’s. He also seems a bit more unstable. This guy was in line to run the White House Situation Room?Jed Bartlet would never.Mr. Whitford can’t quite seem to shake the Josh Lyman affectations that crop up in Jessep in the first act, including the signature vocal downshift that makes it seem like Mr. Whitford is about to choke on his breakfast cereal. In the second, those mannerisms fall away as Jessep is hunted, cornered, and finally driven to explode.‘A Few Good Men’ film poster featuring Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson and Demi Moore, 1992. Wikimedia Commons“A Few Good Men” is still the story of a Navy lawyer’s journey from callow to noble, and of the downfall of a would-be American hero whose god complex leads him astray.But the soul of the play is in the haunting performance of Thom Sesma, playing Maj. Matthew Markinson, whose attack of conscience is the engine that allows Kaffee to bring Jessep down.Mr. Sesma plays Markinson with anguish in his eyes that’s visible from the orchestra section. His take on the role is entirely distinct from that of J.T. Walsh in the film, who played Markinson much more weakly, as a Marine whose turn came less from moral pangs than repressed fury at being denigrated under the boot of Col. Jessep. Mr. Sesma is exactly what this production needed, a fresh take on a key supporting character who discovers a humanity that transcends any obligation to the dictatorial Jessep.In the final showdown, Mr. Blyth and Mr. Whitford show they know their way around this dialogue, wringing it for escalating tension, winding it up through the meter of the beats and rhythm of the words to Jessep’s inevitable self-destruction in the courtroom. These moments are all the more impressive a feat since virtually anyone who has seen a movie since 1992 knows where this is all going.Despite all that, the film remains the superior version of this work, not because it is etched in my memory but because it defines all who come after it and all who handle this material.“‘A Few Good Men’ still crackles with the Aaron Sorkin dialogue familiar from the film, and this production makes a valiant attempt to separate itself without being needlessly overdone. In its scenic design and in performances such as Mr. Sesma’s, it briefly breaks new ground, but ultimately not often enough to recommend. It may be able to handle the truth, but it can’t overcome the legacy of an icon.

A Few Good Movie Memories Overshadow Aaron Sorkin’s Broadway Revival

A Few Good Movie Memories Overshadow Aaron Sorkin’s Broadway Revival

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