STAGE REVIEW : Crisp, Brisk ‘Men’

One “Caine Mutiny Court Martial” is enough court martial drama for a lifetime, since the decks are always loaded and the outcome stacked. Besides, all that military rectitude is bad for the nerves.

Those attributes still pertain in Aaron Sorkin’s “A Few Good Men,” which opened Tuesday at the Wilshire Theatre. The decks are loaded and the outcome stacked. The sounding off never stops and the rectitude is abundant. The surprise comes in this military courtroom drama’s high level of humor and the way in which Sorkin leads us by the nose through his carefully constructed legal maze. We may know we’re being led, but the ride, even at a length of three hours, is uncommonly engrossing.

What we have is standard: The time is 1986. Two marine privates from the U.S. Naval Base at Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay have hazed another so roughly that he’s died in the process. Lance Cpl. Harold W. Dawson (Keith Diamond) and Pfc. Louden Downey (David Van Pelt) stand accused of the murder of Pfc. William T. Santiago (John Ortiz), but insist they were only following orders to shave his head.

Throw in a particularly nasty Queeg-type base commander (Scott Sowers), a deranged lieutenant in charge who invokes God as his partner in unreasonable discipline (Conan McCarty), a weak captain who caves in to both of them (Ross Bickell) and there is your blueprint for disaster.

Santiago had a history of requests to be transferred because of his inability to keep up with the rigors of the routine. His superiors dismissed those as the whinings of a weakling. But at his death some fast shuffling takes place. Veiled threats are made, warnings are issued and log books doctored.

The fun begins when the case goes to court and a jokey young lieutenant junior grade, Daniel A. Kaffee (Michael O’Keefe), is assigned to the defense. His partners are Lt. Cmdr. Joanne Galloway (Alyson Reed), who had wanted to plead the case alone but was denied because of her poor batting average, and Lt. (j.g.) Sam Weinberg (Michael Countryman), a kind of clerk/court jester.

The rest is how this unholy trio gets at the truth. That they will is never in doubt, although the vindication remains morally cloudy. “Only obeying orders” is the tinny, wretched excuse that echoed loudly around Nazi Germany’s extermination camps and Sorkin, in the end, only half deals with that.

What makes “Good Men” tick is not its high moral tone but Kaffee, a hero who behaves more like an antihero and drowns self-doubt in a barrage of clever banter that keeps us amused and off guard. The tactic works, not only in the diversionary sense, but also as courtroom strategy, even if linking that self-doubt to a demanding father belongs in Psychology 101. Kaffee’s kidding offsets Galloway’s crusading ardor and contrasts brazenly with the withering put-downs of the smug prosecuting attorney (a taut Jordan Lage).

O’Keefe’s a real charmer with his offhand self-derision, and Reed manages the improbable feat of making Galloway seem at once dignified and slightly foolish, but all of the acting is crisp, economical and first-rate. Especially notable are Sowers’ megalomania, McCarty’s chiseled madness, Joshua Malina’s cameo as a harmless blockhead and Paul Winfield’s hardened but humane presiding judge. (Paul Butler, who created the role of the judge on Broadway, replaces Winfield starting Wednesday.)

Director Don Scardino’s smart Marine Corps pacing has a kaleidoscopic way of arranging and rearranging the action on Ben Edwards’ bleak set: tables and chairs with the silhouettes of a guard tower and Cyclone fence as backdrop.

What is it we respond to in this kind of play? Its virtual lack of subtext or demands. Its appeal to basic instincts, such as the triumph of good over evil or the vindication of the innocent--well, semi-vindication of the semi-innocent. Simplistic? Without question, but there’s a certain pleasure in putting together the pieces of the puzzle and watching the results you know are there fall neatly into place. The whole enterprise is a quality pastime , much like doing the Sunday Double-Crostics.

That makes “A Few Good Men” hugely commercial and vastly entertaining, and not much of a contribution to the literary canon. It should be just as entertaining when it emerges as a film later this year. This is not damning Sorkin’s considerable achievement with faint praise, but merely identifying the kind of achievement it is.

* “A Few Good Men,” Wilshire Theatre, 8440 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2 p.m.; Sundays,2 and 7 p.m. Additional performances April 27, 8 p.m., and April 29, 2 p.m. Ends May 2. $17-$40; (213) 480-3232. Running time: 3 hours.

‘A Few Good Men’

Keith Diamond: Lance Cpl. Harold W. Dawson

David Van Pelt: Pfc. Louden Downey

Michael Countryman: Lt. (j.g.) Sam Weinberg

Michael O’Keefe: Lt. (j.g.) Daniel A. Kaffee

Alyson Reed: Lt. Cmdr. Joanne Galloway

Edmond Genest: Capt. Isaac Whitaker

Ross Bickell: Capt. Matthew A. Markinson

John Ortiz: Pfc. William T. Santiago

Scott Sowers: Col. Nathan Jessep

Conan McCarty: Lt. Jonathan James Kendrick

Jordan Lage: Lt. Jack Ross

Joshua Malina: Cpl. Jeffrey Owen Howard

Paul Winfield: Capt. Julius Alexander Randolph

William Parry: Cmdr. Walter Stone

Producers David Brown, Lewis Allen, Robert Whitehead, Roger L. Stevens, Kathy Levin, Suntory International Corp. and the Shubert Organization in association with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Director Don Scardino. Playwright Aaron Sorkin. Sets Ben Edwards. Lights Thomas R. Skelton. Costumes David C. Woolard. Sound John Gromada. Production stage manager David Hyslop.