Hustle culture. Productivity porn. The business world has no shortage of stereotypes to describe the dangers of overwork, and probably for good reason.

But on the flip side, sometimes you just have to get stuff done, and few people are getting more done these days than Michael Arden.

At 44, the Tony Award-winning theater director has emerged as one of the busiest practitioners on Broadway, with a diverse portfolio of credits that includes A Christmas Carol, Parade, The Queen of Versailles, the smash hit Maybe Happy Ending, and this year’s crowd-pleaser The Lost Boys. 

Arden’s newest project, the Broadway revival of Aaron Sorkin’s A Few Good Men, opened at last month at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater.

First staged on Broadway in 1989, the fast-moving courtroom drama arrives with a timely message for a world grappling with the implications of warped leadership: When obeying orders is a matter of life or death, what happens when those orders are unethical—or just plain illegal?  

If your only connection to the material is the 1992 movie starring Tom Cruise and directed by the late Rob Reiner, perhaps you count yourself among the untold scores of millennials and Gen Xers who grew up with it as a fixture of cable TV.

You might also be pleasantly surprised at how fresh the Reagan-era story feels on stage. Under Arden’s direction, scenes move briskly from one to the next, flashbacks seamlessly fill in the backstory, a winsome cast trades Sorkin’s crackling dialogue, and before you know it, you’re fully invested in the fate of two Marines on trial for murder.

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