It had been a hit when it ran on Broadway in 1989, and Sorkin himself adapted it into a 1992 film led by Tom Cruise and directed by Rob Reiner, but there was still more to be done. What is it to be decent?” The revival opens on Oct. 29 at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater. And while the emphasis may have shifted, the plot remains the same: Amidst the court-martial investigation of two U.S.
Marines accused of killing a Private, Joanne Galloway (played here by Krysta Rodriguez) must convince Daniel Kaffee (Tom Blyth) to pursue a lead implicating the imposing Colonel Nathan Jessep as complicit. That role — the personification of U.S. military might and of its corruption — was played on film by Jack Nicholson, and is now inhabited by Bradley Whitford, who’d been a replacement Kaffee in the first stage production. The play’s depiction of extrajudicial killing and out-of-control military leadership resonate with Whitford.
But the fundamental argument on the planet today is: Do we survive through law and civil structures, or do we give into the dangers of thinking you can kill your way into security?” The question the plot of “A Few Good Men” asks is whether Jessep oversaw the murder of an inconvenient soldier in order to preserve unity among his corps. And the question hanging above it is whether Kaffee can push himself to do the right, but inconvenient, thing in fighting back. The concept of a lawless military felt familiar for the cast.
She’s told no — and she finds a way every single time.” (And, she notes, Galloway must do all that Kaffee does “in a pencil skirt and heels.”) The current Secretary of Defense comes up again, as Sorkin remarks to Rodriguez that “one of the things [Hegseth] is doing is kicking out women. Hyper-qualified women are gone.” The misogyny “is not anachronistic,” Whitford says. Why is this play so fucking relevant?” But it isn’t just politics that make “A Few Good Men” both intriguing and thorny for its cast.
Whitford, who after his first run in this play appeared on Sorkin’s TV shows “The West Wing” and “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” has by now experienced the writer’s famously rhythm-driven dialogue — although there was a learning curve. (He recalls throwing up backstage the first night he played Kaffee, wondering, as he puts it, “Why did I let my life bring me to this?”) Arden, who has won Tonys for musicals “Parade” and “Maybe Happy Ending,” notes that the two straight plays he’d wanted his whole career to direct were “this and a Shakespeare. Both are musicals in their own way.” As he puts it, “it moves from scene to scene with a dexterity that is technically impossible — and that’s what musicals are.” The pace of the Sorkinian banter is meaningful beyond its showiness. It reflects the characters’ intelligence — though they’re at odds, none is the dumb one.
We’re having fun with it — which you would think would be antithetical to the message of the play, but I’m a big fan of serving your medicine with something sweet.” He looks forward to hearing audience laughter: “The audience is much more receptive when they’re able to have a chuckle, right before they get slapped in the face with reality.” Conjuring that reality has taken hard work. Much like Whitford back in the late 1980s, Blyth is realizing that Kaffee basically never gets to leave the stage. Making the politics seem urgent to a New York audience, may be relatively easy compared to this production’s more pressing task Blyth, Rodriguez, and Whitford are stepping into roles played by legend
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