Wrong time for patriotism

Rob Lowe and Suranne Jones star in A Few Good Men. .

10 April 2012

There could hardly be a less appropriate time for a London staging of Aaron Sorkin's devoutly patriotic American courtroom thriller, A Few Good Men.

The famous film version, based on Sorkin's original play, with Jack Nicholson artfully stealing the thunder from Tom Cruise in the last reel, seductively beat the drum for the US military. I am afraid that watching the stage version now, though, is like being drenched in American cultural whitewash.

Sorkin delivers a soothing message about America's ability to hang on to justice and control its armed forces, thanks to Rob Lowe's Daniel Kaffee, a lawyer in the lion's den of a court martial.

There this advocate is, fighting for two young marines accused of murder, exposing corruption and cover-ups in Guantanamo Bay's Marine Corps.

Yet in real life it is less than a year since American soldiers were discovered torturing prisoners being held without trial in Guantanamo. And who, Tony Blair apart, now speaks of the American military in Iraq as a civilising force?

A Few Good Men is not, anyway, cemented with enough thrills, developments or discoveries to keep the structure holding firm.

It rests precariously on the slight shoulders of Rob Lowe's pretty-boy lawyer, whose androgynous, chocolate-box good looks and frail appearance makes you imagine Kaffee might have suffered sexual bullying in the navy.

Lowe's Daniel is convinced Dawson and Downey, charged with killing a fellow marine who secretly blew the whistle on military misbehaviour, are simple fall guys: could not some senior man have given the secret, "code red" command - an instruction to rough up a marine?

Suranne Jones's JoAnne, briskly at Daniel's side, supplies legal and emotional support. The truth dribbles out slowly, save for one outburst.

A Few Good Men has too few good scenes of dramatics, though Sorkin has a nice line in wry humour. The climactic courtroom tussling and taunting, the battle of nerves and words in which Lowe's Daniel tricks Jack Ellis's testy Colonel Jessep, misses the right wire sense of tension and danger.

Lowe, all cool, neat and slight, does not quite have the kind of charismatic stage personality that compels you to keep an eye on the selfconfident, thrusting lawyer.

Instead he interestingly makes the character more uncertain, more worried about legal victory than Cruise cared to. Ellis's Colonel - who ought have all the menace of a snake poised to strike - does not muster enough pugilism or silky malice.

A remarkable, speedy production by David Esbjornson basks in tension, dynamism and atmospherics. The sounds of helicopters and chanting marines recur.

Michael Pavelka's splendid, subtle set design - mobile metal screens and backcloths of barbed wire, watchtowers and palm trees - allows rapid scene changes. The scramble from military courtroom to abseiling marines takes no time at all.

Esbjornson catches and conveys the rigidities of a world where men behave like machines: Michael Wildman and Nick Court as the accused marines sound impressively dehumanised.

John Barrowman as the counsel expected to get them behind bars and Jones's JoAnne efficiently keep their own emotions under wraps.

Finally, though, A Few Good Men is just too patriotic to be good. It makes it seem that there is nothing much wrong in the American military that luck and a real star lawyer cannot put right.

A Few Good Men

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Wrong time for patriotism

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