A Few Good Men Returns to Broadway — and Misses the Mark

Aaron Sorkin's 1989 courtroom drama "A Few Good Men" has returned to Broadway at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater, and the Guardian's reviewer says the revival is a missed opportunity. The critic cites unconvincing performances and an ill-fitting big stage as the reasons a retooled version of the classic play fails to land.

The timing raises an obvious question: why revive this play now? The reviewer offers a pointed answer. Given the current state of the US military brass, audiences may want to drift back to an older, nobler idea of the armed services — one in which bad actors exist but are rooted out by the good guys in uniform.

That appetite perhaps explains the Broadway return of Sorkin's drama about a cocky military attorney defending two young marines who followed an illegal order with fatal results. The reviewer describes the play as at once sharp and misty-eyed, critiquing a hallowed institution while reverently imbuing it with a certain dignity. In some ways, the critic writes, it does for the military what Sorkin's "The West Wing" did for the Oval Office.

What should audiences do instead?

The review's verdict is blunt. Those in search of crackling drama and military sentimentality should watch the 1992 film rather than plunk down a considerable sum of money to see the play in its current form at the Vivian Beaumont.

The film version carries considerable pedigree:

• Directed by Rob Reiner, it became a hit and earned an Oscar nomination.
• A then boyish Tom Cruise played recalcitrant navy lawyer Daniel Kaffee.
• Jack Nicholson delivered a frightening performance as Colonel Jessep, the hardliner commanding the US military base at Guantánamo Bay, where a marine has died under troubling circumstances.
• The old-fashioned crowd pleaser culminates in a classic trial scene punctuated by an iconic line.

That line remains the property's signature moment. "You can't handle the truth!", Jessep memorably bellows at Kaffee just before confessing to his misdeeds. The reviewer calls the film clever and argues it satisfies precisely the cravings this stage production fails to meet.

The revival's problems, according to the review, are twofold: performances that do not convince and a stage too large for the material. The Vivian Beaumont, one of Broadway's larger houses, leaves the retooled production feeling mismatched to the intimacy courtroom drama demands.

What does this change for theatergoers?

For now, it shifts the burden of judgment onto ticket buyers weighing a considerable sum against a critic's advice to stay home and stream the film. The revival joins a broader Broadway pattern of revisiting proven properties, and its reception will test whether nostalgia for institutional integrity — military, judicial or political — can still fill a large house on its own. Sorkin's broader cultural standing, from "The West Wing" onward, suggests the material retains an audience; whether this production retains that audience is another matter.