Customer Reviews

The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial: A Drama In Two Acts

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As an ardent fan of books, theatre and movies it never ceases to amaze me how the exact same story can play out so differently in each of these media.

Take Phantom of the Opera for example. As a book, a play and a movie, there's something about the Phantom story that powerfully endures (albeit in different ways) in each of the media.

Yet there are some stories uniquely known for their appearance in book form, as a stage play or alternatively as a movie.

Though Caine Mutiny rightly won Wouk a Pulitzer, history nonetheless still seems to record the movie (starring a more mature and gutsy Humphrey Bogart in the title role) as the definitive telling of this story.

For those who've had the pleasure of either the Pulitzer prize winning book or the equally estimable movie, I would heartily recommend this play...also written by Wouk.

As stage plays necessarily must, it reduces the story to its dramatic bare bones and I think in so doing elevates the theatrical version of this story over its cinematic and novelistic brethren.

If nothing else the play is an interesting precis on just what Wouk considered to be indispensible in this story.

I highly recommend it, in fact even over both the book and movie, which in this case is really saying something.