You want the truth about A Few Good Men? It’s a sturdy, workmanlike play built on evergreen themes (i.e., the law of military obedience), an easily digestible nugget of a drama that, 37 years after its Broadway debut, remains a staple of community and regional theaters everywhere.
It’s also completely overshadowed, reputation-wise, by the $240 million–grossing 1992 movie adaptation that’s cemented its position in popular culture thanks to slick direction by Rob Reiner, a genuinely great supporting cast (Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, Cuba Gooding Jr, and Noah Wyle among them), a sincere and unmannered Tom Cruise, and an up-to-11 Jack Nicholson shouting “You can’t handle the truth!” in one of the most meme-able scenes of the past few decades.
If you go to the current Lincoln Center Theater revival of Aaron Sorkin’s play expecting a replica of the high-octane Hollywood legal thriller, you’ll be disappointed. There’s nothing flashy about the Michael Arden–directed production (perhaps a surprise from the mind behind the high-flying The Lost Boys): A Few Good Men is simply, as it always was, an engrossing courtroom drama about two Marines charged with the murder of another on their base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 1989.
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
Sorkin gets the exposition out of the way expeditiously: Lance Cpl. Harold Dawson (Lavel Schley, top-notch), and Pfc. Louden Downey (Collin Kelly-Sordelet, appropriately, first-class), are going on trial for “Murder, Conspiracy to Commit Murder, and Conduct Unbecoming a United States Marine,” reads Dawson in a sworn statement. “We tied Private Santiago’s hands and feet with rope and we forced a piece of cloth into his mouth,” says Downey. Adds Dawson: “We put cloth in his mouth and sealed it with duct tape.”
Sounds open-and-shut, which is probably why Lt. Kaffee (Tom Blyth)—a nine-month Navy lawyer whose specialties include plea-bargaining and playing softball (a metaphor if ever there was one)—is charged with their defense. “I’ll get it knocked down to Involuntary Manslaughter. Twelve years. They’ll probably be home in seven,” he shrugs. Lt. Com. Galloway (Krysta Rodriguez)—an internal affairs lawyer and a “fairly harmless neurotic person,” asserts Kaffee’s superior, Capt. Whitaker (a winning Billy Eugene Jones)—thinks there’s much more to the case, and makes it her business to investigate alongside Kaffee and his second, Lt. Weinberg (Nick Blaemire). “Do you know what a code red is?” she asks, referring to an off-the-books disciplinary action. A hazing, in layman’s, or fraternity, terms. She’s certain Santiago’s death was the result of a code red gone wrong. But two privates would never just do that; an order—an illegal order—had to come from someone. The executive officer, the god-fearing Lt. Kendrick (John Zdrojeski, frighteningly good)? The base commander, Col. Jessep (Bradley Whitford), who was “just vetted by the White House” and “eats breakfast 80 yards away from 4,000 Cubans who are trained to kill him”?
While you’re rerunning the movie in your mind and (unfairly) comparing Blyth to Tom Cruise—this seems like a good time to acknowledge that, yes, what you’re seeing onstage follows the film pretty closely. (Incidentally, both Reiner and Sorkin have discussed how after writing the screenplay Sorkin went back and changed the play for the national tour.) As for the changes the playwright made for this version, they mostly appear to center on Kaffee: References to his father, implying he’s a Navy nepo baby, have been excised; also, he gets a better, less glib, ending, which incorporates a striking slice of brightness across the stage courtesy of lighting designer Japhy Weideman. (Arden uses lighting to great effect throughout the production, emphasizing the characters’ isolation throughout the immense Beaumont stage.) Sorkin also has cut Jessep’s crass crack about “cold showers” and “some gal president,” but don’t worry: His “if you’ve never gotten a blow job from a superior officer” line—directed at Kaffee, referring to Galloway—remains intact.
Regarding Blyth, his Kaffee is fresh-faced, more naive than he’ll admit, and cocky but not off-putting—precisely what the role requires. As for the courtroom confrontation between him and Jessep—the one that produces the famous line—it’s fine. Best known for his turn as Josh Lyman (“I drink from the keg of glory!”) on Sorkin’s seminal political series The West Wing, Whitford—who understudied, then took over, the role of Kaffee in the original Broadway production—simply seems out of place as the insufferable colonel. Jessep is supposed to be “the stuff of which nightmares are made,” but Whitford doesn’t inspire that bone-deep fear. He does, however, pull off “You can’t handle the truth,” and that’s what you’ll find emblazoned on T-shirts, mugs, hats, hoodies, totes, and dog-tag keychains on sale in the lobby.
A Few Good Men opened Oct. 29, 2026, at the Vivian Beaumont Theater and runs through Jan. 10, 2027. Tickets and information: lct.org
