Keegan Theatre return bringing A Few Good Men

The line ‘you can’t handle the truth’, as famously snarled by Jack Nicholson playing Colonel Jessep in the award-winning 1992 film, A Few Good Men, has become the one of the most famous movie quotes of all times.

But while Aaron Sorkin’s A Few Good Men has gained fame as a film, he originally wrote it as a play – it was first performed on Broadway in 1989.

The courtroom drama centres on the trial of two Marines for complicity in the death of a fellow Marine at Guantanamo Bay. The two are represented by an inexperienced Navy lawyer, who is initially unenthusiastic, expecting a plea bargain and a cover-up. But a female member of his defence team insists that they need to uncover the truth. The lawyer eventually makes a valiant effort to defend his clients and, in so doing, he puts the military mentality and the Marine code of honour on trial.

Now, the original stage version is coming to Galway’s Town Hall Theatre in a production by Washington DC’s Keegan Theatre Company, who are on their 13th visit to the City venue. They are performing A Few Good Men in memory of the Town Hall’s late Manager, Michael Diskin.

When Irish people think of Guantanamo Detention Centre, we tend to think of those people held there as part of America’s ‘War on Terror’, which involved rendition flights into Shannon Airport. But its history is much older than that, as Keegan founder Mark Rhea, who plays Col Jessep in this production, explains.