Dark, steel gray walls loom ominously as the moody setting for Aaron Sorkin’s breakthrough, lacerating portrayal of a troubled military.

Sorkin’s A Few Good Men seems like just the right play at just the right time for the University of Michigan Department of Theatre and Drama's on-point production at the Power Center.

Director Geoff Packard writes in his program notes that he began to see the play through “a different lens with a new set of images in my mind.”

“Like many of you, I find myself grappling with a complicated relationship with America today, questioning who we are, who we’ve been and where we are headed as a nation,” he writes. “The world in the play, as I read it now, is no longer the hopeful vision I once imagined. It has become grayer, darked and more monolithic.”

Aaron Sorkin was searching for a new story for a play. His sister Deborah was a lawyer who served three years in the United States Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps. She suggested that Sorkin read up on an incident at the Naval facilities at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Marines had been tried for seriously injuring another Marine under the orders of an officer.

Sorkin changed the details, made the circumstances more tragic, and shifted the focus to three JAG officers. It is in this play that Sorkin started to create his personal style. The dialogue is fast-paced, the actors are in motion, and the issues are never simple but always create tension. Sorkin also found that politics, government, and the media are interesting topics for theater and film. His long-running West Wing, The Newsroom, and a new take on To Kill a Mockingbird all deal with complex issues with no easy answers.

Packard realizes his new perspective on the play with an excellent cast of young actors, a stylized choreographic movement, dramatic lighting that zeros in the individuals, and that silver quick back-and-forth dialogue that defines the characters. The play's focus is on a trial in that dark gray room and on three Navy officers who evolve as the case proceeds.

Maya McEntyre plays Lt. Cmdr. Joanne Galloway. She has learned about the case of two Marines who have been accused of murdering another Marine. She thinks that that’s not the whole story and the question is, who is really responsible for the death? McEntyre plays Galloway as both compassionate and a stickler for the rules. She prods, pushes, and speaks out, even though it’s not her case to begin with.

Rohan A Maletira plays Lt. j.g. Daniel A Kaffee, a hotshot lawyer, son of a respected Navy officer, and a careless JAG defense lawyer. It’s his case but he’s ready to make a deal without diving too much into the circumstances that landed him the case of two gung-ho Marines. Maletira plays Kaffee at first as something of a Navy playboy, all swagger and good humor. But he’s also wound up, nervous, overworked. The deal is the easy way out. Under Galloway’s influence, he begins to wonder if there’s more to the case.

Ryland Gigante plays Sam Weinberg, the quiet member of the team. Married with a new child, Weinberg has other things on his mind. Gigante plays Weinberg in a soft voice that rises to the occasion when needed to act as a referee for the other two.

The two Marines are accused of killing a fellow Marine. The lawyers discovered that they may have accidentally been complying with an officer's “code red.” The questions are why were they ordered to do something illegal and who ordered them.

Samuel Hopkins as Dawson and James Parascandola as Downey play the defendants, wrapped up in the traditions of the Marines, their allegiances to the “unit, corps., God, country.” Hopkins and Parascandoloa capture that nervous energy and their unflinching dedication to what they’ve told is the Marine way.

Lt. Col. Nathan Jessep in command of the Guantanamo base is a tough, mean-spirited, evasive, and uncooperative leader. Zachary Gergel has a plum role as Jessep. He has a rough swagger that suggests he doesn’t think much of JAG officers, and Gergel has his dismissive voice and physical threat down pat. He also has the best line in the play. When Kaffee drills him about his command and whether he has ordered the code red, Jessep roars back that Kaffee doesn’t want to know what is required.

The target is Pfc. William Santiago played by Raymond Ocasio IV. He has been harassed and ridiculed for his inability to perform at the level required for a Marine, and has requested time and after time that be transferred. Ocasio gives the character just the right look of fear and anger.

The entire cast is outstanding in a play that requires careful reflection.

Eli Sherlock’s scenic design with that eye-grabbing gray wall sets the theme and is also flexible for quickly moving from scene to scene. William Webster’s lighting design also shifts perfectly from scene to scene, creating that dark mood.

This is powerful theater done to perfection.

Hugh Gallagher has written theater and film reviews over a 40-year newspaper career and was most recently the managing editor of the Observer & Eccentric Newspapers in suburban Detroit. 

The University of Michigan Department of Theatre & Drama production of Aaron Sorkin's "A Few Good Men" continues at the Power Center, 121 North Fletcher Street, Ann Arbor, at 8 pm on February 21-22 and at 2 pm on February 23. For tickets, call 734-764-2538 or go to tickets.smtd.umich.edu.