Can you handle the truth?
It was a Hollywood hit but A Few Good Men started life as a stage production, which Queensland Theatre Company has gone back to with stellar results.
A Few Good Men delivers the kind of audience experience you want every time you take your seat in a theatre.
Queensland Theatre Company’s production is world class. But it is only on until December 7 so, if you don’t already have a ticket, treat yourself to an early Christmas present.
The play’s big-name 1993 Hollywood film adaptation produced one of modern cinema’s most memorable and quoted lines, providing a fascinating frame of reference for this return to the 1989 source material pitting military and legal codes against one another in the courtroom.
Inspired by events in 1986 at Guantanamo Bay, the infamous US base in Cuba, A Few Good Men starts with the death of a US Marine in the barracks.
From the get-go Aaron Sorkin’s masterful writing pulls the viewer into a tightly wound web of ambiguous culpability. The 130 minutes it takes to unravel the truth leaves many more casualties in its wake.
a great script underpins a great show
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Since this Broadway debut Sorkin has reached the pinnacle of TV and film and won pretty much every major award possible, most notably creating and producing TV’s The West Wing (which bagged 26 Emmys during its run) and earning Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA nods for his screenplay adaptation of The Social Network.
It took just a couple of minutes of enjoying the clever rapid-fire repartee to affirm the obvious but often lacking principle that a great script underpins a great show. So rather than the typical challenge of orchestrating synergy, the director just has one job – do not stuff it up.
But that was never going to happen, because – as Queensland Ballet confirmed producing Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s ballets – huge international artists do not grant staging rights to small state arts companies unless they are convinced they can do them justice.
Now in his second year as QT’s artistic director, three-time Matilda Award winner Daniel Evans has graduated from wunderkind to genius. The equally brilliant multi-award-winning design team of Simone Romaniuk (sets and costumes), Ben Hughes (lighting) and Mike Willmett (sound and composition) have created a visual and aural environment that perfectly complements the performances, staging, messaging and mood Evans has orchestrated.
He did nonetheless have his hands full casting 14 actors of varying experience and background to convincingly deliver American accents, jargon and military training.
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Oh, and there is just one female lead. She is the conscientious, dogged Internal Affairs officer Lieutenant Commander Joanne Galloway, whose litigation inexperience is not the only reason she is ordered to hand over the case to a Junior Grade Lieutenant, Daniel A. Kaffee. Kaffee might be a Harvard Law graduate, but he is more interested in playing the game – on all fronts – than justice.
These roles were played by Demi Moore and Tom Cruise in the movie, but welcomingly and advantageously Courtney Cavallaro and George Pullar do not draw comparisons in appearance or characterisation. This brings freshness to both this adaptation and their dynamic, which does however lack the complicated layer of sexual tension.
The other key role is commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Jessep, the antagonist who utters that line. The need for an acting heavyweight to stamp his own imposing presence on the part has brought celebrated talent Hayden Spencer home to Brisbane.
While I understand audience anticipation of and reaction to Jessep’s pivotal outburst, in a live performance these reactions do break the scene’s intensity and momentum.
Although I have not mentioned the rest of the cast, they are excellent, and the small distractions on opening night of overly amplified mics and lapses in military posture should be easily addressed.
The takeaway is that A Few Good Men is compelling from start to finish and a tour de force for Queensland Theatre Company. Beyond the court’s judgement, you will still be contemplating the complexities of personal responsibility within this hierarchical system designed to protect us.
A Few Good Men continues at the Playhouse, QPAC, until December 7.