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Review/Theater; Honor, Bullying and Conformity In the Trial in 'A Few Good Men'

Review/Theater; Honor, Bullying and Conformity In the Trial in 'A Few Good Men'
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November 16, 1989, Section C, Page 23Buy Reprints
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Even if the stage were not a battleground of tables and chairs in gun-metal gray, it wouldn't take long to recognize the terrain in ''A Few Good Men,'' Broadway's new play about a court-martial. ''It's an open-and-shut case,'' goes an early line. ''I suspect there's more to this case than what's reported in the division report,'' goes another. The cast of antagonists includes a sarcastic Navy defense attorney who doesn't want to be a hero (Tom Hulce), a tightly wound commanding officer who insists on being one (Stephen Lang) and some cowed enlisted men caught in the crossfire. Let the scene change, and more than a few good marching men in crew cuts and khaki will sound off, ''One, two, three-four!''

So pronounced is the deja vu at the Music Box that one can only assume that the author, Aaron Sorkin, is invoking ''The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial'' and its brethren intentionally. And why not? It's reassuring to watch familiar conventions being given a new workout. The Music Box Theater, after all, is where an even older genre of boulevard drama was made fun again in ''Sleuth'' and ''Deathtrap.'' When the evidence of a ''conspiracy to commit murder'' piles up in the opening hour of ''A Few Good Men'' - and when that evidence is buttressed by some very good acting under the direction of Don Scardino - one sits back in confidence that Mr. Sorkin is laying land mines for 10 o'clock explosions.

But it's nearly 11 when the play ends, and Mr. Sorkin never does reward one's expectations. ''A Few Good Men'' is too predictable to satisfy as courtroom entertainment, and its attempts to tie its plot to some larger moral issues, in the manner of Charles Fuller's ''Soldier's Play,'' are lightweight. The evening's message is: ''You don't need to wear a patch on your arm to have honor.'' There is a higher code than the Marine code, and there are times when good soldiers must disobey orders. If that lesson isn't news, at least it might have been made compelling. But despite passing allusions to Nuremberg and My Lai, ''A Few Good Men'' doesn't argue its unarguable point in the gripping context of history.

Mr. Sorkin's talky case is instead merely a generic one about bullying and conformity in the barracks of the peacetime Marines. Though the play's fictional crime was committed in 1986 at the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the time and place seem irrelevant. The co-defendants are accused of overdoing the unofficial punishment of an unpopular private. The most pressing question raised by their trial is whether they might be covering up for higher-ups.

While it is announced that the Marine Corps itself is on trial, the story turns on much narrower grounds. The why-and-whodunit solutions prove unsurprising, and to reach them the author force-feeds laborious clues into the action, some errant luggage tags among them. For a subplot, Mr. Sorkin charts the slowly blossoming alliance of three ill-matched defense lawyers, each of whom comes with a single psychological characteristic whose cause (a domineering father, for instance) may also be affixed like a luggage tag.

Since one of the trio is a woman, a crusading special investigator played by Megan Gallagher, there might have been a love triangle within the defense team. But that possibility for drama is foreclosed early, when one of her male colleagues (Mark Nelson) is revealed to be a devoted new dad. This leaves any possible romantic activity to Mr. Hulce, who is schematically presented as Ms. Gallagher's contentious opposite: as he is afraid to fight a serious case, so she loves to fight yet doesn't know how to win. They're made for each other, of course, but they are the last people in the theater to figure that out.

Despite the handicap of a Hollywood coiffure, Mr. Hulce draws on his considerable stores of humor and sensitivity to portray his character's fast conversion from arrogant goof-off to daredevil legal-eagle. Ms. Gallagher forcefully sounds her one note of two-fistedness, and the impassioned Mr. Nelson professionally snaps Mr. Sorkin's one-liners, some of which are so redolent of show business they seem to have wandered in from a Johnny Carson monologue instead of ''Mister Roberts.''

No less fine are such supporting players as Victor Love and Michael Dolan as the stoical defendants, Clark Gregg as a legal defender of the military faith, Paul Butler as a no-nonsense judge and Geoffrey Nauffts as the witness inevitably called upon to provide comic relief in Act II. In a class by himself is Mr. Lang, the base commander, whose spectacular performance as a feral Vietnam veteran in Steve Tesich's ''Speed of Darkness'' in Chicago this year is matched here by his mesmerizing turn as a post-Vietnam military strongman with a smile and tongue as fierce as his muscles.

For all Mr. Scardino's accomplished direction of actors, his staging makes hokey use of tacky lightning-and-thunder effects to try to simulate the riveting suspense missing in the plot. One result is to make ''A Few Good Men'' look dated, and that impression is compounded by a script that has been unluckily ambushed by current events. ''We live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns,'' says Mr. Lang at one point - a perfectly plausible statement for his character to make in 1986. But to an audience in November 1989, the historical imperatives underlying ''A Few Good Men'' may seem almost as ancient as its courtroom theatrics. Familiar Conventions In New Workout A FEW GOOD MEN, by Aaron Sorkin; directed by Don Scardino; set design by Ben Edwards; costume design by David C. Woolard; lighting design by Thomas R. Skelton; sound score and design by John Gromada; production stage manager, Dianne Trulock. Presented by David Brown, Lewis Allen, Robert Whitehead, Roger L. Stevens, Kathy Levin, the Suntory International Corporation and the Shubert Organization. At the Music Box, 239 West 45th Street. Sentry ... Ron Ostrow Lance Cpl. Harold W. Dawon ... Victor Love Pfc. Louden Downey ... Michael Dolan Lieut. (j.g.) Sam Weinberg ... Mark Nelson Lieut. (j.g.) Daniel A. Kaffee ... Tom Hulce Lieut. Comdr. Joanne Galloway ... Megan Gallagher Capt. Isaac Whitaker ... Edmond Genest Capt. Matthew A. Markinson ... Robert Hogan Pfc. William T. Santiago ... Arnold Molina Lieut. Col. Nathan Jessep ... Stephen Lang Lieut. Jonathan James Kendrick ... Ted Marcoux Lieut. Jack Ross ... Clark Gregg Cpl. Jeffrey Owen Howard ... Geoffrey Nauffts Capt. Julius Alexander Randolph ... Paul Butler Comdr. Walter Stone ... Fritz Sperberg Marines, sailors, M.P.'s, lawyers, et al. ... Stephen Bradbury, Jeffrey Dreisbach, Michael Genet, George Gerdes and Joshua Malina

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 23 of the National edition with the headline: Review/Theater; Honor, Bullying and Conformity In the Trial in 'A Few Good Men'. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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