THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 30, 1994 TAG: 9411290115
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 11 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Theater Review
SOURCE: Montague Gammon III
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines
Stripped to its essentials, ``A Few Good Men'' is a straightforward courtroom thriller. It's an old-fashioned who-dunnit, why-dunnit that just happens to have a eye on pop politics and easily accessible social issues. At the Little Theatre of Virginia Beach, it is a tale told well, marked by convincing performances and tightly paced production.
Courtroom thrillers are essentially fables of good confronting evil. Here that ancient drama is played out in a military court and is wedded to the equally familiar tale of the lone outsider who challenges an established order.
For the few who have heard nothing of the Tom Cruise movie or of this play, the outsider is a young Navy attorney. Lt. j.g. Daniel Kaffee is detailed to defend two teenage Marines who caused the death of a fellow enlisted man during what civilians might call a hazing. (The Kaffee character is based on Virginia Beach resident and lawyer, Donald Marcari, who acted as technical adviser for the production.)
At various times, Kaffee is at odds with a Marine prosecutor, a fanatically Christian Marine lieutenant, a domineering Marine lieutenant colonel, the members of his own defense team, the men he must defend and by implication the might of the American military establishment. His challenge is as much to find his true opponent as it is to conquer that adversary.
Note that almost everyone outranks the lone hero. Aaron Sorkin's script is, at one important level, a meditation on power.
The play is woven from an ever-shifting interplay of the power that is conferred by rank or official position, the power that proceeds from intellect and accomplishment, the power of guile and deceit of power as it is perceived and power as it is exercised.
When finally the raw power of righteousness joins the powers of rank and intellect to smite evil with almost biblical force, the play provides a moment of rare satisfaction.
The playwright has worked into his script any number of subtexts and secondary plots. He makes points about the importance of order and discipline to the young men who find their personal worth as members of the military. He lards his characters' dialogue with all kinds of references to their personal histories and consequent motivations.
He's got bits about sexism and its various forms, about duty, individual responsibility and the importance and danger of following orders blindly.
Sam Hakim's direction focuses on the central plot and lets the audience ferret out for themselves most of these thematic sidelights.
One of Hakim's particular strengths here is the way he has paced the show, holding one's attention with the relentless grip of a bulldog. Another is his deft casting.
Some genuinely good acting is turned in by John Anderson as Kaffee. Though the production has simplified this character just a bit, Anderson is smooth as silk when he conveys Kaffee's charming arrogance and self-assurance.
Other performances deserving particular praise include Andy Landers as Lance Cpl. Dawson and Jonathan White as Pfc. Louden Downey, the accused men, and Bob Scott as Lt. j.g. Sam Weinberg, a member of the defense team. Traci Gardner is worth watching as Galloway, and Cynthia Tademy is especially precise in her brief role as the military judge.
The lighting design of Sherry Forbes and Ann Heywood and the set design of Jim Mitchell work well together to let the Little Theatre stage shift through the play's myriad locations from Guantanamo to Washington, D.C. The lighting creates some memorable images. by CNB