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Author
Aaron Sorkin

Producer
Bill Kenwright

Director
David Esbjornson

Design
Michael Pavelka

Costume
Beth Clancy

Lighting
Mark Henderson

Sound
Ian Dickinson

Performers

Daniel Kaffee
Rob Lowe

Joanne Galloway
Suranne Jones

Jack Ross
John Barrowman

Sam Weinberg
Dan Fredenburgh

Nathan Jessep
Jack Ellis

Jonathan Kendrick
Jonathan Guy Lewis

Matthew
A Markinson
Andrew Maud

Julius Alexander
Randolph
Robert D Phillips
 
Haymarket Theatre
18 August - 17 December 2005
This is straightforwardly enjoyable evening in the theatre. Aaron Sorkin's play, more famous in its film version with Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson, holds a strong narrative and explores with some finesse so conflicting dilemmas of justice. Mercifully the play is solely concerned with the path to justice, if that what they get, of two wrongly imprisoned marines. They have been accused of applying the order "code red" to another marine who died. "Code red' is illegal and therefore not a legitimate order. No one gives it, or rather no one will own up to giving it. Yet, marines are under order to obey to the letter every command they are given. It is argued this is what keeps company discipline and maintains supremacy in battle. There is no such thing as an illegal order. However, there is a dilemma. Marine commanders say that the men in their command only carry out orders; they don't make them up for themselves. But, the play asks, how could the murder of the young marine have happened. The crucial question is did the imprisoned marines act alone or were they given an illegal order from above: an order, that is, of which there is no written or, at first, acknowledged order.
       The marines are summoned to a court martial, for which they are provided with a lawyer chosen from a pool of reluctant conscripts. Enter Daniel Kaffee the most reluctant playboy of the group. It's quite clear that he is being sent for form's sake, not for justice's. He is, moreover, thought to be a 'safe' pair of hands from the military point of view as his father is a famously highly decorated senior officer.
      But Kaffee is a more complex character. He want to be a good lawyer and is only rather indifferent to the legal cases he has to handle in the army, most of which are very trivial. For him the play is about his military and his civilian loyalties, and in the end his civilian loyalties win. This personal rite of passage and internal dilemma is excellently played by Rob Lowe. Rob Lowe is most famous in Britain for his portrayal of the White House aid, Sam, in the TV series West Wing, and in some ways his TV role and Daniel Kaffee share characteristics. His outward wit and detachment thinly mask a much more questioning and committed interior. Outwardly a good-looking playboy, he is internally a serious man. Rob Lowe has the measure of this part to a tee and the play is worth seeing just for that.
      But Aaron Sorkin has set Daniel Kaffee in a context. Opposite Kaffee is Joanne Galloway a much more openly committed lawyer who resents the fact that an obviously wrongful arrest and ensuing miscarriage of justice must be fought all the way with all guns blazing. She wears the armour of righteousness. She is scornful of Kaffee's laid-back manner. But her frontal assaults seldom bring her victory. She underestimates both the intelligence and 'weaponry' of her opponents on a military camp. She is outsmarted by them, and in the end it the laid-back Kaffee who wins the day, if the outcome of the play is exactly a victory. Interestingly, the contrast between the two lawyers nicely contrasted as male and female, is a metaphor for battle-strategy and thus is itself an expose of the military machine they confront.
      Opposite these two lawyers is the committee in Guantanamo Bay led by the Nathan Jessup, a Southern commander who brooks no opposition to his absolute power in his own domain. Results are what he wishes to be judged by: ends justify means, though the Marxist ancestry of such a thought would be anathema to him. He has swagger and this swagger inspires or overwhelms his juniors, which includes the deeply troubled Matthew Markinson, who eventually commits suicide rather than support an injustice or behave in an unseemly manner towards a superior officer.
      Nathan Jessup is a marvelous role played well here by Jack Ellis, but not with quite the authority Jack Nicholson brings to the part in the film. Just as Kaffee is quintessential Lowe country, Jessup is quintessential Nicholson. But Ellis is good and paces very well the gradual shift between controlling the situation, maintaining the distant courtesies necessarily afforded to visiting lawyers, resenting their presence and, eventually, allowing his anger and self-justifying righteousness to get the better of him in the dÈnouement when he confesses to having given the 'Code Red' order. The trial scene crackles with well-anticipated tension, which is a tribute to the actors, the playwright and the production.
      In the end justice is not done, nor perhaps could it ever have been. Jessup is arrested, but the two marines whose trial began the whole affair are acquitted of the crime of murder but dishonourably dismissed for "conduct unbecoming a marine". This is no justice, and is what give the play depth. It is not about 'goodies' winning or 'baddies' losing, though there is that. It is about the possibility of justice being achieved in the absolutist environment of a military establishment with its own code of rights and duties. The play does not take the easy option of saying that such a chain is without merit. It shows it has defects, but does not argue that such a system should be abandoned. Others might say so, but Sorkin stops short of this, and this tension and final disappointment are what make his play more interesting than the average courtroom drama.
      It might be said that such things don't go on quite like this, but I know of one true incident where it does. A friend of mine who was a young private in the British army was on training exercise involving absailing down a cliff. Just before his turn to take the rope and swing down the cliff-side, a young recruit began his descent. The rope broke and the recruit fell to his death. The body was removed and the exercise continued. The order came. "Next". My friend refused. He was arrested and court-martialled. When convicted and punished he was told that his conduct was not correct. The correct procedure was to follow the order and then complain to the authorities that he had been given an incorrect order. "Tell that the to the dead man", replied my friend.
Roderick Swanston

 Theatre Royal Haymarket
  Aaron Sorkin