Michael Arden directs three Broadway shows at once while revising A Few Good Men
Tony Award-winning director Michael Arden is juggling three Broadway productions at the same time, including the new revival of A Few Good Men at Lincoln Center, and says staying focused comes down to choosing the right collaborators and returning to the text.
Michael Arden is currently directing three Broadway shows at the same time, a workload that would overwhelm most theater makers. The 44-year-old Tony Award-winning director is the force behind the revival of Aaron Sorkin’s A Few Good Men, which opened last month at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater, while Maybe Happy Ending and The Lost Boys remain in strong runs.
Arden’s recent credits also include A Christmas Carol, Parade and The Queen of Versailles, and he has several further projects in development, among them a musical version of the animated film Happy Feet and another musical that follows the characters of Huckleberry Finn. He began his Broadway career as an actor, playing Tom Sawyer in the 2003 revival of Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and later moved into directing and producing. Together with scenic designer Dane Laffrey and producer Mindy Baiada, he operates the production company At Rise Creative.
The 1989 courtroom drama, first staged on Broadway before its 1992 film adaptation starring Tom Cruise, centers on two Marines on trial for murder and asks what happens when obeying orders is a matter of life or death and those orders are unethical or illegal. Arden said the play struck him as both timeless and timely, particularly in its questions about government transparency and the military. He pointed to a moment this year when elected officials urged troops not to obey illegal orders and were then called treasonous for doing so.
Arden said he was drawn to a play that could fill the Beaumont’s large stage without losing its intimacy, and that his preferred theater is work that lets audiences recognize today’s headlines within a script written decades ago. He said he had seen the 1992 film and an early school production, but rediscovered the text when he came across it on a list of plays that had not been revived.
Bradley Whitford, a Sorkin veteran who won an Emmy for The West Wing, takes on the role of Colonel Nathan Jessep, made famous on screen by Jack Nicholson and his line “You can’t handle the truth.” Arden said he left the interpretation to Whitford, whom he described as “so damn likable,” and chose him because he was the first actor he thought of for the part. His aim, Arden said, is to tell the story clearly and give the audience room to form its own opinions.
Asked how he keeps so many productions moving, Arden framed his approach around choosing strong collaborators and trusting them with their parts, rather than controlling every detail himself. The result is a production in which scenes move briskly from one to the next, flashbacks fill in backstory and Sorkin’s dialogue carries the evening.
Source: fastcompany.com
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