"I WANT THE TRUTH!" "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!"
Ok, the truth is that the production of "A Few Good Men" currently playing on the West End is perhaps one of the worst acted and directed plays I have ever seen. My friend Kim was slightly kinder -- she thought it rated with a somewhat decent high school performance.
The only redeeming quality is that it was SO bad, it was laugh-out-loud funny, thereby making the ticket price almost worth it for the giggles after a rough day at work. And from the groans and outbursts of laugher from fellow audience members (at highly inapropriate moments, I might add), I was not alone in my opinion.
Where to start....
First of all, many people do not know that "A Few Good Men" was a play before it was a movie. And it's a gripping, well-written play at that. Then the movie came along with stellar direction and blockbuster performances by Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, and Kevin Bacon. Right there, it probably should have been retired from the stage forever, because once a movie is made word-for-word from a play and turns out that well, every production thereafter will be unfairly compared and criticised.
The first fatal mistake was that they obviously tried to cast the play with actors that looked like the stars from the movie -- the director clearly had no faith that the audience would appreciate other interpretations. Worse than that, the actors attempted to play the characters exactly as Tom, Demi and Jack would have played them....making them come across as mediocre impersonators.
Eighties heartthrob, Rob Lowe, played the lead role as Lt. Daniel Kaffee. And while he is still drop-dead gorgeous (Hello Dorian Gray -- the guy looks AMAZING!), he is in no way a stage actor. Yes, he was dreamy in "St. Elmos Fire." He was believable on the "The West Wing." Heck, I even liked him when he made a comeback in "Austin Powers." But I dare say his talent has not carried over to the stage. He jumped on lines. His timing was off. He went for the cheap laughs. He did this weird talking-out-the-side-of-his-mouth thing that was really annoying. I know he and (playwright) Aaron Sorkin are good buddies, but this was ridiculous casting.
Far worse were the actors playing Lt Cdr Joanne Galloway (Demi Moore's character in the movie) and Col Nathan Jessep (played in the film by Jack Nicholson). The actress playing Lt Galloway delivered her lines at mock speed, as if she might forget them if she didn't spew them out fast enough. Moreover, she held a striking resemblance to Molly Shannon's "Mary Katherine Gallagher" character on Saturday Night Live...we kept expecting her to leap out into the audience yelling "Superstar!"
The actor trying very hard to be Jack Nicholson, while he did somewhat resemble him, came across as being entirely too effeminate for a tough-as-nails Marine colonel. And the actor playing Lt Jack Ross seemed as if he might break out into song and dance at any moment...so it came as no surprise to see that his recent credits included roles in the musicals "Chicago," "The Producers" and "Sunset Boulevard." I think his hair styling might have been a leftover from his "Chicago" run -- definitely not Marine Corps regulation.
And why is it that actors and directors insist military roles be played with bad, exaggerated southern accents that can't be matched to specific states or regions? Most American actors can't get that accent right, much less Brits. They must think the whole U.S. military hails from Texas or Louisiana. I would have preferred they just kept their British accent and let us use our imaginations. You could physically see the audience shudder every time the actor playing Pfc Laudon Downey yelled "Sir!" -- it came out as a twisted garbled mess that felt more and more like a knife in the head as the play wore on.
Finally, I'd be remiss not to mention the "artistic" treatment of scene changes. As the courtroom set was being shifted in dim lighting, actors dressed as Marines in camoflauge would descend from the ceiling from ropes as if they were being airlifted into and out of the courtroom. During a couple changes, soldiers came out with machine guns, miming as if they were tiptoing through a dark field in battle. On one change, a Marine in full dress blues came out and did an elaborate gun-twirling routine (think that's called a drill) right smack in the middle of the courtroom. It was weird. It was awkward. It made no sense. It was laughable. It was what you'd get if you crossed military bootcamp with Cirque du Soleil. Hey -- there's the next Cirque du Soleil concept -- Marinetastica!
In college, I had a good friend named Mike, and we were obsessed with bad theatre. We would seek out the worst of the worst, just for a good laugh. Highlights included an exceptionally bad dinner theatre production of "1776," where there were too few men so women played some of the male roles. Another standout was "Civil War" (a rock-opera about the Civil War, need I say more?) on Broadway -- think that one closed the night it opened. Anyway, I'm sorry that Mike could not have been here to share this one with me -- it no doubt would have made our greatest hits.
