"A Few Good Men"

Theatre review
"A Few Good Men" at Cortland Repertory Theatre
The Ithaca Journal
August 14, 2008
668 words
"Cortland Rep's 'A Few Good Men' features stellar performances"

full text here

Cortland Rep's ‘A Few Good Men' features stellar performances

By Mark Tedeschi • Special to the Journal • August 14, 2008

If you aren't familiar with the courtroom drama “A Few Good Men,” you must at least have heard “You can't handle the truth!”, a catch phrase popularized by Jack Nicholson in the Rob Reiner-directed film version. Nicholson has his own catalogue of memetic utterances, but that's probably because he's choosy about the material he gets paid to verbalize.
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It's not especially hard to come up with a repeatable one-liner (see “You're fired!”) -- but it is rather difficult to consistently pen scripts that actors will chomp ravenously at the bit to earn the privilege to play. Aaron Sorkin does that. When Sorkin wrote “A Few Good Men,” producer David Brown bought the film rights before the play even premiered. Brown signed on a hefty handful of early ‘90s superstars -- but enough of that. The play version is still alive and well at the Edward Jones Playhouse.

Cortland Repertory Theatre's penultimate production of the summer hits all the right notes for a Sorkin brainchild. Bill Kincaid, responsible for last summer's CRT standouts “How the Other Half Loves” and “Almost, Maine,” expertly directs a committed cast in a story that Sorkin based on a true occurrence.

The events transpire in 1986, in several locations in Washington, D.C. and in the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. There are few, if any, set changes between scenes; Jo Winiarski (“The Great American Trailer Park Musical”) selects the most essential elements (a background barbed wire fence, a few chairs and a table) and cooperates with a sophisticated yellow, white, and blue lighting design (Shawn Boyle, in his CRT debut) to seamlessly yet stylishly shift locations in space and time. And CRT vet Jennifer Paar's costumes, mostly versions of military dress uniforms and fatigues, coupled with everyone's close-cropped haircuts, add to a sense of authenticity in the performances.

Brent Bradley plays Lt. j.g. Daniel Kaffee, a sarcastic son-of-a-famous-lawyer lawyer who, at the entreaty of the brave Lt. Cmdr. Joanne Galloway (Victoria Haynes, undaunted as the show's sole female performer), takes on the defense of two Marines: Pfc. Louden Downey, an earnest simpleton (Parker Pogue), and Lance Cpl. Harold Dawson, a sharp, duty-minded soldier (Jesse Gabbard). They're accused of inadvertently murdering a peer, Pfc. William Santiago (Michael Angelo Morlani), during a “Code Red,” a form of extrajudicial punishment or “disciplinary engagement” routinely performed on someone who falls out of line.

Galloway believes that the order was given by Capt. Matthew Markinson (Michael Kreutz) and Lt. James Kendrick (Brent Bradley), send down the chain by Lt. Col. Nathan Jessep (Kyle Kennedy, in the role Nicholson held in the film). Kaffee enlists the help of Lt. j.g. Sam Weinberg (Kevin Sebastian) to research and prepare. Lt. Jack Ross (Aaron Seeburger) prosecutes while Capt. Alexander Rudolf (Michael F. Hayes) presides. The action bubbles as the trial begins and boils during Jessep's legendary climactic testimony.

The stellar acting and direction in CRT's “A Few Good Men” enables success for Sorkin's handiwork. There are a few inevitable stutters, but they're forgivable considering the breakneck pace at which the actors work. Kennedy's Jessep seems honorable enough at first, but bits of malice and wrath eke their way through until eventually Bradley's Kaffee craftily provokes him into explosion.

Within the first minute of the play, the rat-a-tat dialogue screams of Sorkin's hand. Anyone who's seen (and can stomach; it's not for everyone) “The West Wing” or “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” knows that he thrives on making light of nearly everything with jokes and joke callbacks, offhand pop culture references, multi-person conversation overlaps, and often-epic monologues (too epic to quote here, and they should be heard, not read). Usually everyone participates in the almost-too-clever back-and-forths, making some characterizations unrealistic -- but it's purely a stylistic liberty.

Sure, he has a religio-political agenda. Sure, his protagonist's most prominently recurring motif is a fondness for Yoo-Hoo. Sorkin makes it worth glazing over any perceivable flaws to enjoy the aesthetic payoff in listening to the words of a thoroughly talented and downright gifted writer.