A study of military values slouches, snaps to attention
A few good men, plus a good woman, are taking over the Ritz Theatre Company stage in Haddon Township in its production of A Few Good Men, the compelling military crime play that Aaron Sorkin wrote in 1989 before capturing America with The West Wing on TV.
A few good men, plus a good woman, are taking over the Ritz Theatre Company stage in Haddon Township in its production of
A Few Good Men
, the compelling military crime play that Aaron Sorkin wrote in 1989 before capturing America with
The West Wing
on TV.
The drama, a Broadway play in 1989 and a star-filled 1992 film directed by Rob Reiner, involves two Marines court-martialed for the killing of another at Guantanamo Bay in the mid-'80s. That was just before the U.S. base on Cuba's southeastern shore became a major detention camp - and long before it became the controversial repository for prisoners the U.S. government labeled "enemy combatants."
The play, which explores time-honored Marine values gone awry, is set in a less-complicated era, when the Guantanamo base was primarily a U.S. presence in the region and a constant affront to Fidel Castro and Cubans angry about its existence.
The Ritz production makes the clear case that A Few Good Men doesn't suffer from the base's dated context. Honor, trust, ambition, the art of the deal, and the foggy middle that can separate right from wrong - in the right hands, these are ageless themes.
The play, in Esther Flaster's fluid staging on a busy set by Chris Alberts that effectively serves several locations, doesn't quite take off from the start. Throughout, there are scene changes that call for bam-bam rapidity (Sorkin's scripts are noted for them) but sometimes end up humdrum, if only by a second or two.
At the matinee Sunday, the first 20 minutes seemed to have lost a dimension. The ensemble lacked nuance. The glib young lawyer (Howie Brown) comes off in early scenes without charm; we don't laugh at the caustic lines Sorkin gives him. The female military attorney (Jessica Doheny) is not just cold, she's stone. When she says she wants to do trial work "with a vengeance," she could be asking for iced tea with her burger. And the sidekick lawyer put on the case (John Devennie Jr.) seems a disconnect, in from another play.
But then the action transfers briefly from Washington to Guantanamo - and that's when Brown, Doheny, and Devennie find their stage footings, almost in unison. Brown's lazy lawyer shows his misgivings but is basically sound; Doheny turns her character into more than an ambitious one-upper; Devennie becomes their nagging conscience. From that point, the three never let go - in fact, Brown, as our young courtroom hero, grabs the play by its themes and rides them like a windsurfer.
The three top commanders on the island are portrayed as worthy adversaries by Michael Hagan, Jon Geisler, and John Jakowski - Hagan, the chief officer, barks and moves with a perfect hubris. From its beginning, the production is filled with military posturing, and the cast of 16, including the defendants played by Roderick Slocum and Nathaniel Westover, excels in bringing off the rigidly mannered exchanges. By the end of the show, you can only salute the effort.
A Few Good Men
Presented by the Ritz Theatre Company, 915 White Horse Pike, Haddon Township, N.J., through April 4. Tickets: $20-$30. Information: 856-858-5230 or www.ritztheatreco.org.
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