‘A Few Good Men’ plumbs the nature of military honor

At the curtain call at the end of Your Theatre’s production of “A Few Good Men,” the entire 15-member cast, all of them playing active military, lines up in uniform across the very front of the stage. They give the standard cast gesture of appreciation to the technical crew up in the balcony, but in the case of “A Few Good Men,” that gesture also plays as a summary message to the audience. 

Curtain calls are always emotional things but this curtain call is especially so with a long lineup of the American warrior class so up close and personal. 

The cast has just walked the audience through the unnerving crucible of morality that members of the armed services make when deciding what is moral and what is not. Together, the cast and theatergoers for the last couple of hours have examined what is acceptable behavior and what is not when the military protects the weak from the strong. So I think this curtain is literally bringing home to the audience what has gone down on stage.

It’s heady stuff and not the stuff that local theatrical companies can easily pull off. But Your Theatre, now in its third season at its revamped home at the Steeple Playhouse, has risen to the occasion. Their production of “A Few Good Men” reaches out and grabs one of the great war and peace issues of this or any other era: What is the boundary between might and right, and who gets to decide it?

Eric Paradis, one of Your Theatre’s longtime actors and key business members, is in his fifth major directorial turn with “A Few Good Men” and he’s handled the large cast and the long script smartly. It’s a compelling story — indeed it’s hard to imagine any other screenplay that has so embodied American culture the last 40 years as Aaron Sorkin’s 1988 drama — and Paradis wisely lets Sorkin’s compelling tale largely tell itself. 

The story more than reverberates in our current political and military circumstances. Substitute Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for Lt. Col. Nathan Jessup and you have a version of the same dilemma playing itself out before our own remote eyes every day now. 

It’s hard to know where to begin with this production because there are so many good performances and such superior production tech. This is not an easy thing to pull off when you are performing on a local stage scenes that nearly every living American has witnessed multiple times – either in the 1990s movie houses or since then in home videos or the endless TV loops. 

The images have been endless since Rob Reiner and Sorkin’s iconic film version of “A Few Good Men” first became an indelible part of American folklore. “You can’t handle the truth” is arguably the most memorable line in American drama in the last half century.

This play, of course, has to be carried by the actor playing the central protagonist, Lt. Daniel Kaffee (the Tom Cruise part in the film version), and Ryan Durkay more than rises to the occasion. Kaffee begins as a charismatic ne’er-do-well but he has to convincingly evolve into a man intense enough and competent enough to confront evil itself, all in the confines of a community theater-sized space.

The other two centers of gravity pulling at Kaffee in Your Theatre’s “A Few Good Men” are Lt. Cmdr. Joanne Galloway, an internal affairs JAG officer, and Lt. Col. Nathan Jessup, the base commander at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, where two young Marines have been accused of murdering another Marine in an unofficial disciplining incident in their unit.

Allie Goodman is the essence of a tightly-wound by-the-book do-gooder in her portrayal of Galloway and Teddy Hendricks embodies all the macho self-righteousness of the Jessup part made legendary by Jack Nicholson.

I would not want to utter “You can’t handle the truth!” on stage in light of the ubiquity of Nicholson’s performance of that line in our culture these last four decades. But this play needs to be performed at the local level and Hendricks is one of the guys who can convincingly do it. Bravo!

Before I leave the actors, a word about Jarel Perullo, who plays the young Marine corporal accused of murder. He is every bit “the few, the proud,” as the old recruiting slogan went, and his sad fate is the emotional core of this production.

Perhaps more impressive than anything about this staging is the way the lighting and set design have transformed the small Steeple Playhouse stage to convey the epic brotherhood and discipline of Marine culture. Tommy Whalen’s audio recordings and Lauren and Timothy Helley’s screen projections expand the set beyond offices and courtrooms to the outdoor world that is Marine-dom.

Paradis explained to me exactly how it was done: screen flats hung behind the stage to project stock footage of Marines onto, and then Your Theatre’s own recordings of Marine “jodies” (cadences) rhythmically sung as they march. I don’t really understand it all myself beyond being able to tell you that it works and is powerful. All credit to the Helleys and Whalen and Paradis who read the drill sergeant parts and the cast who read the Marines.

I’m so proud that local New Bedford theater could bring a production of the quality of “A Few Good Men” to town. The volunteer local actors, set designers, stage managers and business folks who make “Your Theatre” work are a treasure for the city. 

“A Few Good Men” will be performed at the Steeple Playhouse at 159 William St. in New Bedford on May 8 and 9, 15 and 16 at 7:30 p.m. and on May 10 and 16 and 17 at 2 p.m. You can purchase tickets at www.yourtheatre.org.

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