{"id":1033,"date":"2026-10-30T09:42:06","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T09:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/?p=1033"},"modified":"2026-10-30T09:42:06","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T09:42:06","slug":"a-few-good-men-review-aaron-sorkins-mediocre-courtroom-drama-is-back-on-broadway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/?p=1033","title":{"rendered":"‘A Few Good Men’ review: Aaron Sorkin’s mediocre courtroom drama is back on Broadway"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\tTheater review\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA FEW GOOD MEN\t\t<\/h2>\n

Two hours and 30 minutes, with one intermission. At the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center,\u00a0150 West 65th St.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

You can\u2019t handle the truth?<\/p>\n

Actually, the core problem of \u201cA Few Good Men,\u201d Aaron Sorkin\u2019s 1989 play that\u2019s been ceremonially trotted out at Lincoln Center, is that we can<\/em> handle the truth for a whole two and a half hours. The truth is revealed early on, we acknowledge its extreme predictability and then said truth is repeatedly discussed by the adjectives \u2014 sorry, the characters<\/em> \u2014 all night long.<\/p>\n

Such is this musty old courtroom drama that resembles a million others with its chatty windbags and zero surprises. This is Sorkin at his most oom-pah-pah, earning cheap applause breaks for self-important lines delivered like asteroid impacts.<\/p>\n

Director Michael Arden\u2019s ginormous revival has a few good sequences and a few good performances, but \u201cA Few Good Men,\u201d which opened Thursday night on Broadway, has never really been a good play.<\/p>\n

Of course, there are people who love a bunch of cliche \u201cobjection!\u201ds and Sorkin\u2019s portentous dialogue in which every character sounds the same \u2014 like the Minions did their undergrad at Stanford. The film version of \u201cA Few Good Men\u201d was a Best Picture Oscar nominee, and is fondly remembered for Jack Nicholson\u2019s performance as bigfooting Colonel Nathan Jessup.<\/p>\n

Here the fatigues are donned by Bradley Whitford, Josh from Sorkin\u2019s \u201cThe West Wing,\u201d who is one of the production\u2019s pluses. The imposing Whitford innately understands the writer\u2019s pace, smart-aleck humor and curious knack for crafting jackasses, as well he should.<\/p>\n

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\"Scene<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>

Bradley Whitford stars in the revival of \u201cA Few Good Men\u201d on Broadway. Emilio Madrid<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Looking like Lorne Michaels went to boot camp, the actor is strong and compelling despite Sorkin turning the Marine officers (John Zdrojeski and Thom Sesma are the others) into \u201cMuwhaha!\u201d villains with no discernible human qualities. If Whitford\u2019s Guantanamo Bay scenes sound like they\u2019re from \u201cAvatar,\u201d that makes sense. The original actor to play this role, Stephen Lang, went on to play Col. Quaritch in those blue alien movies. \u00a0<\/p>\n

At Guantanamo, Jessup commands two Marines, Louden Downey (Collin Kelly-Sordelet) and Harold Dawson (Lavel Schley making a sensational Broadway debut), who are on trial for the murder of Private William Santiago. The duo tied the man up and stuffed a cloth in his mouth, which turned out to be poisoned. But the dirty secret is that the crime was a \u201ccode red,\u201d an off-the-books hazing-like punishment that\u2019s an acceptable practice at the base. They claim they were ordered to do it.<\/p>\n

So the thrust of the show is exposing that conspiracy while indicting the military\u2019s unshakable hierarchy and secretive culture. There is not a single millisecond when you don\u2019t know exactly where the story is headed, and boy does it take its sweet time getting there.<\/p>\n

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\"A<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>

Joanne (Krysta Rodriguez) and Daniel (Tom Blyth) work to prove the Marines are innocent. Emilio Madrid<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The accused men are assigned a lawyer, Navy Lt. Daniel Kaffee. Cocky and improvisational, he\u2019s inexperienced and hardly their best option, the same of which could unfortunately be said about the actor who plays him, Tom Blyth.<\/p>\n

The 31-year-old Brit is known for films like \u201cThe Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes\u201d and \u201cPeople We Meet On Vacation.\u201d He\u2019s swell in those, a heartthrob type, and onstage he has natural charisma. But this is simply not a Broadway caliber performance. He\u2019s uncomfortably hesitant and absent of any smoothness, as though he were a trainee subway train conductor. He jarringly tacks on peculiar jokiness to force an eccentricity that isn\u2019t there. Blyth frankly seems underrehearsed, particularly in the second act trial scene, in which much of the cast was line-flubbing with abandon the night before opening.<\/p>\n

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\"Six<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>

The revival at Lincoln Center is massive. Emilio Madrid<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kaffee describes himself and his two sidekicks as \u201ca pushy broad, a smart Jew and a Harvard mouth,\u201d and that\u2019s really about as deep as this thing gets.<\/p>\n

As his legal cohort Lt. Joanne Galloway \u2014 the brains of the operation until she randomly isn\u2019t \u2014 Krysta Rodriguez is plenty prepared, but there\u2019s an artificiality and stiffness to everything she does that would be more at home in a musical or a sit-com. Frazzed and unserious, she could almost be on \u201cAlly McBeal.\u201d Sorkin is equally responsible for this, but Joanne never comes across as capable or intelligent. She\u2019s just a typical 1980s bucket of neuroses. Sorkin likes to combat sexism while also being kinda sexist.<\/p>\n

Rounding out the trio, Nick Blaemire is perfectly fine as their funny third wheel, Lt. Sam Weinberg, only it\u2019s never clear why he\u2019s there. Even Sam is stumped. He brings up his apparent superfluousness multiple times.<\/p>\n

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\"Scene<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>

Lavel Schley, right, makes a sensational Broadway debut. Emilio Madrid<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Speaking of superfluousness, this is a humongous show. There is a cast of 21 actors \u2014 the same size as the musical \u201cMJ\u201d \u2014 and gifted designer Dane Laffrey of \u201cThe Lost Boys\u201d and \u201cMaybe Happy Ending\u201d has turned the Vivian Beaumont into a cavernous airplane hangar.<\/p>\n

At times the scale is exciting, particularly during movement choreographer Ricky Ubeda\u2019s entrancing military rituals. But when it\u2019s just three underdog lawyers in a small room trying to nail their defense strategy or during a meat-and-potatoes courtroom scene, the intensity floats up to the rafters.<\/p>\n

That is, until the energizing Whitford arrives at that famous speech and line: \u201cYou can\u2019t handle the truth!\u201d.<\/p>\n

But by then we\u2019ve handled quite enough, thank you.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

See more of our coverage in your search results. Theater review A FEW GOOD MEN Two hours and 30 minutes, with one intermission. At the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center,\u00a0150 West 65th St. You can\u2019t handle the truth? Actually, the core problem of \u201cA Few Good Men,\u201d Aaron Sorkin\u2019s 1989 play that\u2019s been ceremonially<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1034,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bd24.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}