The Lieutenant

The Lieutenant is a brilliant rock opera which opened in 1975 and received four Tony nominations and five Drama Desk nominations, including ones for Best Musical and Best Score, despite an abbreviated run of only one week. Clive Barnes of the New York Times said it was a “rare musical with something worth saying,” calling it “unusual entertainment, sharp in its aspiration.” The show follows the passage of Lieutenant William Calley from raw recruit in the US Army through his 1971 court-martial for the infamous My Lai massacre of innocent civilians in 1968. The authors question the guilty verdict of a man who was tried first in the national media and later by a military tribunal, when militarism itself should perhaps shoulder the brunt of the blame. “Bertolt Brecht would have cheered this bold new look at the American sickness that was My Lai,” chimed in the Long Island Press, and ABC News said, “the rock score is one of the most dynamic and soaring since Jesus Christ Superstar.”