Review of A FEW GOOD MEN
A FEW GOOD MEN
Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle
Imagine if you will: that you have been falsely accused of murder one. Obeying the orders of your CFO, you duct taped a fellow employee to his or her swivel chair, solely with the intention of improving his or her productivity. Right when you thought you were making progress on important motivational issues, he or she went limp and died.
Perhaps he or she was not made of the right stuff. Can you be blamed if you were just trying to run up your company’s profitability? Then also the question amounts to: is it really your fault if the CEO had warned you that your stock option would NOT be back dated unless corporate earnings increased?
Imagine also: that due to fiscal obligations, perhaps alimonies to past wives, trifling gambling debts and a nagging coke habit, that you must compromise your legal standards and settle for a court assigned defense team. One member of your defense team has never tried a case: he has consistently plea-bargained his way off the docket, out of the business suit and onto the pitcher’s mound at the local softball diamond. The other member of your team, a rabid, Pelosi idealist, has dragged six cases to court and has soundly lost every one of them. You might be thinking: had O.J. such a dream team, at best he would be writing “what if” books from the cell block rather than from the golf course.
Such is the situation for two Guantanamo-based Marines on trial for the murder of a member of their platoon. The play is Aaron Sorkin’s A FEW GOOD MEN and it is performed by Marin’s most decorated theater company: the Ross Valley Players.
Any reviewer who has routinely attended productions staged by the Ross Valley Players is aware of the sustained quality of their work. What distinguishes their current offering is its scale: A FEW GOOD MEN requires that every member of the cast be an experienced, quality actor. Given the content of the play, anything short of a great performance would not live up to the high tension and intensity of the play.
The director, James Dunn, a Korean War U.S. Marine (although not a retired Marine as some advanced publicity may have averred) serves adequately as his own technical director for military protocols, jargon and traditions.
A cataclysmic collision course, between two marginally experienced junior officers (a Lieutenant Commander is regarded as a junior officer) of the Judge Advocate General’s office and a hard-boiled career Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Jessep, is signaled almost from the minute the Klieg lights warm-up.
The show is deeply thought provoking and absolutely riveting. Anyone who has ever attempted to sort out the moral ambiguities and ramifications of military life, dedication to duty, military discipline or the moral imbroglio of contemporary camp life in Guantanamo, will certainly enjoy ruminating on the quandaries presented in this drama.
While it is obvious that acts of aggression in pursuit of cheaper fuel for the S.U.V. and global warming are indisputably justifiable, the moral high ground becomes shrouded in fog when one asks: should military members be allowed to duct tape subordinates to their bunks and beat them to within centimeters of death, assuming it enhances the readiness of the platoon and improves general morale?
Don’t judge until you see A FEW GOOD MEN. This play may completely change the way you look at uniformed services like the C.H.P., the California Department of Forestry, the Stinson Beach Park Rangers, the Salvation Army, the Cub Scouts and, it may even change the way you are rearing your children.
Active Duty Military members are admitted free of charge. Those of dressed in mufti should expect to pay $20 or under. The play is one of the best to be seen anywhere in the bay area. It runs through February 18 at the Marin Garden Center. For tickets you should call 415-456-9555 or go to the website at www.rossvalleyplayers.com.