Courtroom drama makes for good theater. And “The Caine Mutiny,” Herman Wouk’s 1951 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, has provided plenty of it over the decades. Adapted for film, television, and the stage, this classic military courtroom confrontation raises questions of duty versus loyalty and law versus humanity. On Sunday, “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial” returns once more to the New York stage in a revival mounted by producer Jeffrey Richards and four-time Tony winning director Jerry Zaks.

But with after so many iterations and adaptations, what is it about this story that continues to be compelling over the decades? “It’s a fight in which the stakes are life and death,” Mr. Zaks said. “It demands that the audience really listen and pay attention.”

The earlier versions of “The Caine Mutiny” dramatize a series of mishaps and near-disasters at sea under the obsessive and unstable Captain Queeg (memorably played by Humphrey Bogart in the 1954 movie). During a life-threatening typhoon, three junior officers convince Stephen Maryk, a fisherman and their senior officer, to relieve Queeg of his command and take the ship to safety.

The play, “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” begins during Maryk’s trial, in which only one man stands by his side: a reluctant military lawyer, Lt. Barney Greenwald. In order to clear Maryk of mutiny, the U.S. Navy’s greatest crime, Greenwald must prove Queeg unfit for duty – by chronicling the captain’s bizarre behavior on board, as well as the influence exerted on Maryk by the other officers, including one who is a writer awaiting a publishing contract for his first novel.

It’s not just the plot that keeps producers coming back. One of the most engaging variables is how to cast the role of Greenwald. When Mr. Wouk wrote the novel, he gave Greenwald’s character a strong Jewish identity, yet in the first Broadway play, in 1954, Henry Fonda played the role. The same year, Puerto Rican actor Jose Ferrer played Greenwald in the first adaptation for the big screen. Nearly 35 years later, Eric Bogosian, an actor of Armenian descent, brought Greenwald to life in Robert Altman’s television version of the courtroom drama.

For Messrs. Richards and Zaks, the goal was strict adherence to Mr. Wouk’s original conception. “Authenticity, first and foremost,” Mr. Zaks said. “When the character talks about being Jewish, I want the audience to believe it. I want them to get so involved in the story their hearts break.”

This production found its Greenwald in David Schwimmer, who had been looking around for a Broadway role. In a clever escape from his “Friends” character, Mr. Schwimmer enlisted as a conflicted, yet compliant Greenwald up against his law school buddy Lt. Commander John Challee (Tim Daly), who is prosecuting the case. While Greenwald is defending Maryk (Joe Sikora), Challee is attempting to save Queeg (Zeljko Ivanek) from career-ending dishonor.

“For me, personally, this role is a way to honor the memory of my five (great) uncles, who all fought in World War II and were Jews from New York,” Mr. Schwimmer told Playbill, though he is in a press “black-out” before opening night. “I’m not going to get on a soapbox right now about the prejudice that I still feel exists in the country … and there is an opportunity in the play through this character to tap into it.”

Aside from taking on issues of prejudice – both camouflaged and, toward the end of the production, more overt – Messrs. Richards and Zaks said they are aiming at other topical issues. “We picked this up in early 2004, and it was very timely because we were at the end of our first year in Iraq and thought that everybody was taking a very acute look at what it meant to be involved in another war,” Mr. Richards said.

The play “doesn’t offer easy answers to anyone about which side to come down, but it will hopefully resonate to some audiences now that we are in a conflict with a lot of opinions,” Mr. Daly, who plays Challee, said.

Mr. Wouk, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants who served the Navy in the Pacific as an officer aboard two destroyer minesweepers, the U.S.S. Zane and the U.S.S. Southard, originally wrote “The Caine Mutiny” through the eyes of Willie Keith, a rebellious piano-playing Princeton graduate who joins the Navy to avoid being drafted into the infantry. Mr. Wouk started writing his first novel, “Aurora Dawn,” during off-duty hours aboard the U.S.S. Stafford. He sent a few chapters to Irwin Edman, a philosophy professor and close friend at Columbia, who, in turn, quoted a few pages verbatim to a New York editor. Mr. Wouk received a contract for “Aurora Dawn” while off the coast of Okinawa.

In 1952, after nearly giving up his writing career following the disappointment of his partly autobiographical second novel, “City Boy,” Mr. Wouk won the Pulitzer Prize for “The Caine Mutiny.” It became a best seller, and he was asked to adapt it into a Broadway play. At the same time, Bogart, who was nearing the end of his career and his life, read the novel and asked to play Queeg, a turn that earned the film seven Academy Award nominations. “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial” was brought once again to Broadway in 1983 with Greenwald’s character restored to ethnic authenticity by John Rubenstein.

What the novel has that the stage adaptations leave out is the actual mutiny that takes place onboard the ship. In “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial” the mutiny is already in the background. But even without the action at sea, there’s plenty enough drama to keep audiences, actors, and producers occupied, decade after decade.

Opens May 7 (Schoenfeld Theatre, 236 West 45th Street, between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, 212-239-6200).