Of good men and good stories

Theatre director Nadir Khan is always ready for a good story. Earlier this year, theatre person Devika Sahani of The Dragon Rose Project sent him one that he couldn’t put down. He felt the nudge to bring it on stage. A Few Good Men, which he has directed, is now set to open the theatre initiative, Aadyam 2019, in Mumbai and Delhi. “I didn’t pick the script, it picked me,” says Khan.

The story was written by American playwright Aaron Sorkin, according to legend, on cocktail napkins while working as a bartender. A Few Good Men is famous as a 1992 Hollywood film starring Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise and Demi Moore, which was nominated for four Oscars and five Golden Globes and gave the world the iconic comeback, “You can’t handle the truth”. Cruise plays a lazy young lawyer who finds himself opposite a battle-hardened commander (Nicholson) of the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in a case that involves a dead marine and two others in the dock.

Khan had watched the film but did not give it a second thought till he was handed the script. “I hope this is what the audiences will share — that you know the story and have seen it in the light of one particular director in one particular medium. It is quite exciting for me to see a different take on the same thing. It is like the retelling of a good story.