Brownwood News – The Brownwood Lyric Theatre is busy working on the first installment in their 2018 season of shows, A Few Good Men. The play, written by Aaron Sorkin, was turned into a movie starring Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise, and Demi Moore in 1992.
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Former Brownwood High School theater teacher Larry Mathis, who is directing the show, is excited for this production because it is “a show that we weren’t sure that we’d ever be able to have the opportunity to do.”
Mathis says he has been pleasantly surprised by the “level of excitement and energy” the cast is bringing to the rehearsals. Mathis acknowledged what a challenge it is to do a show made famous by a movie, saying that you “worry about how (you) even stack up.” He simply told the cast to “watch the movie, learn from the movie, then bring the characters to life in your own way.”
Cast member Landry Blackstock returns to the Lyric after a 10-year hiatus playing Lieutenant Jonathan Kendrick, played by Keiffer Sutherland in the movie. Blackstock says seeing other “straight plays” (non-musicals) produced in recent years made him excited to audition for this show.
Ben Sword, seen most recently in the Lyric’s production of Guys and Dolls as Nathan Detroit plays Lieutenant jack Ross, the lawyer for the government portrayed in the movie by Kevin Bacon. Sword says that Ross is a challenging character, a man who “wants to do the right thing”, but is constrained by his job as a JAG lawyer.
Like the movie, the play has some adult language in it, but Mathis says the worst parts of it were “edited because it was just too much, but there are certain curse words in the show that we hear every day.”
The play is based on an incident experienced in real life by writer Aaron Sorkin’s sister Deborah, from the “Commander Galloway/Demi Moore” position. She was a naval lawyer assisting another attorney in trying a case against 10 enlisted men who severely beat another Marine during an actual Code Red. The lawyer she assisted became the basis for the role of main character Daniel Kaffe.
A Few Good Men opens its eight-performance run at the Brownwood Lyric Theatre on February 16th, closing the following Sunday, February 25th. Showtimes and tickets can be found online at www.brownwoodlyrictheatre.com, or at the door the night of the show.