Theater evaluation
A FEW GOOD MEN
Two hours and half-hour, with one intermission. At the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center, 150 West sixty fifth St.
You can’t deal with the reality?
Actually, the core drawback of “A Few Good Men,” Aaron Sorkin’s 1989 play that’s been ceremonially trotted out at Lincoln Center, is that we can deal with the reality for a entire two and a half hours. The reality is revealed early on, we acknowledge its excessive predictability and then said reality is repeatedly mentioned by the adjectives — sorry, the characters — all evening lengthy.
Such is this musty outdated courtroom drama that resembles a million others with its chatty windbags and zero surprises. This is Sorkin at his most oom-pah-pah, incomes low cost applause breaks for self-important strains delivered like asteroid impacts.
Director Michael Arden’s ginormous revival has a few good sequences and a few good performances, but “A Few Good Men,” which opened Thursday evening on Broadway, has never actually been a good play.
Of course, there are individuals who love a bunch of cliche “objection!”s and Sorkin’s portentous dialogue in which every character sounds the same — like the Minions did their undergrad at Stanford. The movie model of “A Few Good Men” was a Best Picture Oscar nominee, and is fondly remembered for Jack Nicholson’s efficiency as bigfooting Colonel Nathan Jessup.
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Here the fatigues are donned by Bradley Whitford, Josh from Sorkin’s “The West Wing,” who is one of the manufacturing’s pluses. The imposing Whitford innately understands the author’s tempo, smart-aleck humor and curious knack for crafting jackasses, as effectively he should.
Bradley Whitford stars in the revival of “A Few Good Men” on Broadway. Emilio Madrid
Looking like Lorne Michaels went to boot camp, the actor is robust and compelling despite Sorkin turning the Marine officers (John Zdrojeski and Thom Sesma are the others) into “Muwhaha!” villains with no discernible human qualities. If Whitford’s Guantanamo Bay scenes sound like they’re from “Avatar,” that makes sense. The authentic actor to play this position, Stephen Lang, went on to play Col. Quaritch in these blue alien films.
At Guantanamo, Jessup instructions two Marines, Louden Downey (Collin Kelly-Sordelet) and Harold Dawson (Lavel Schley making a sensational Broadway debut), who are on trial for the homicide of Private William Santiago. The duo tied the man up and stuffed a material in his mouth, which turned out to be poisoned. But the soiled secret is that the crime was a “code red,” an off-the-books hazing-like punishment that’s an acceptable follow at the base. They claim they were ordered to do it.
So the thrust of the present is exposing that conspiracy while indicting the army’s unshakable hierarchy and secretive tradition. There is not a single millisecond when you don’t know precisely where the story is headed, and boy does it take its candy time getting there.
Joanne (Krysta Rodriguez) and Daniel (Tom Blyth) work to show the Marines are harmless. Emilio Madrid
The accused males are assigned a lawyer, Navy Lt. Daniel Kaffee. Cocky and improvisational, he’s inexperienced and hardly their most suitable choice, the same of which could sadly be said about the actor who performs him, Tom Blyth.
The 31-year-old Brit is identified for movies like “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” and “People We Meet On Vacation.” He’s swell in these, a heartthrob kind, and onstage he has pure charisma. But this is merely not a Broadway caliber efficiency. He’s uncomfortably hesitant and absent of any smoothness, as though he were a trainee subway practice conductor. He jarringly tacks on peculiar jokiness to pressure an eccentricity that isn’t there. Blyth frankly seems underrehearsed, significantly in the second act trial scene, in which much of the forged was line-flubbing with abandon the evening before opening.
The revival at Lincoln Center is huge. Emilio Madrid
Kaffee describes himself and his two sidekicks as “a pushy broad, a smart Jew and a Harvard mouth,” and that’s actually about as deep as this factor gets.
As his authorized cohort Lt. Joanne Galloway — the brains of the operation until she randomly isn’t — Krysta Rodriguez is lots ready, but there’s an artificiality and stiffness to everything she does that would be more at residence in a musical or a sit-com. Frazzed and unserious, she could virtually be on “Ally McBeal.” Sorkin is equally accountable for this, but Joanne never comes across as succesful or clever. She’s just a typical Nineteen Eighties bucket of neuroses. Sorkin likes to fight sexism while also being kinda sexist.
Rounding out the trio, Nick Blaemire is completely wonderful as their humorous third wheel, Lt. Sam Weinberg, only it’s never clear why he’s there. Even Sam is stumped. He brings up his obvious superfluousness a number of occasions.
Lavel Schley, proper, makes a sensational Broadway debut. Emilio Madrid
Speaking of superfluousness, this is a humongous present. There is a forged of 21 actors — the same measurement as the musical “MJ” — and gifted designer Dane Laffrey of “The Lost Boys” and “Maybe Happy Ending” has turned the Vivian Beaumont into a cavernous airplane hangar.
At occasions the scale is thrilling, significantly during motion choreographer Ricky Ubeda’s entrancing army rituals. But when it’s just three underdog attorneys in a small room making an attempt to nail their protection technique or during a meat-and-potatoes courtroom scene, the depth floats up to the rafters.
That is, until the energizing Whitford arrives at that well-known speech and line: “You can’t handle the truth!”.
But by then we’ve dealt with fairly enough, thank you.
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