Charles Isherwood, the Journal's theater critic, thinks A Few Good Men works better as a movie than as a play. He saw the film only recently. Then he saw Lincoln Center's lavish new Broadway revival. It made his case for him.
Aaron Sorkin's courtroom drama opened on Broadway in 1989. Rob Reiner's film came three years later, with Tom Cruise, Demi Moore and Jack Nicholson. Producer David Brown, the man behind Jaws, had bought both the stage and film rights before the play ever opened. Sorkin went on to The West Wing and The Social Network. Isherwood thinks the play shows why. Even on the page, it jumps between dozens of scenes in different times and places. A camera handles that better than a stage crew.
Michael Arden, who won Tony Awards for Parade and Maybe Happy Ending, directs the revival. He's known for musicals, and the Vivian Beaumont is a huge house where big musicals tend to do well. So everything got bigger to fill the space. Two big flags frame the stage, the Stars and Stripes and the Marine Corps colors. Isherwood calls the result “lavish but listless.” Underneath, the play is a small courtroom story broken up by flashbacks. The design, he writes, swamps it “like giant swaths of bunting decking out a puppet show.”
Who works and who doesn't
Tom Blyth plays Kaffee, the cocky junior lawyer. Krysta Rodriguez plays Galloway, the lawyer who won't let the case go. Isherwood finds both performances flat. The villains fare better. Bradley Whitford, the West Wing star who took over as Kaffee in the original production, now plays the base commander Jessep. Isherwood calls him a real asset. The show runs at 150 W. 65th St. in New York through Jan. 10, 2027. Isherwood's bottom line is that the film tells this story better than the stage can.
Our read
This is an Investments story in disguise, so bear with us. Lincoln Center took a modest play and wrapped it in a giant production. More flags, more set, more stage. In Isherwood's telling, the story didn't get better. It got harder to see. The same thing can happen to retirement money. A simple holding gets wrapped in a fancier package, with a bigger name, more moving parts and a higher fee. The holding underneath doesn't get any better.
Here's the check this week. Open the fund list in your 401(k) or IRA and find the expense ratio. That's the yearly fee a fund takes as a share of your money. It's usually on the fund's fact sheet. Compare the fund you own to the plainest index fund on the same list. If yours costs several times more for the same kind of stocks, ask what the extra production buys you. Sometimes the answer is bunting. A fee is easier to fix before the curtain goes up than after years of paying it. A short look at that one column is the cheapest review you'll ever do.