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No doubts about this verdict
Good men
and true: Jeff Fahey (left) with Miles Richardson (far right .
. . in more ways that one) with, at the table, Martin Shaw (left),
Robert Vaughn, Owen O’Neill, Luke Shaw, David Calvitto, Martin Turner,
Paul Antony-Barber, Nick Moran, Robert Blythe and Edward Franklin Twelve Angry Men Birmingham Rep ***** REGINALD Rose’s taut drama has lost none
of its power since it first started life as a television play 59 years
ago. (see video link at end of review). And that power comes perhaps from a very human
story, one it is easy for anyone to relate to, a jury charged with
deciding whether a 16-year-old boy, facing the electric chair, is guilty
of murdering his father. The twelve jurors all have their own views, their
own reasons, their own feelings and their own prejudices to deal with as
well as weighing the evidence they have heard. The play opens at the end of closing arguments as
the 12 good men and true are sent away by the judge to make their
decision with a warning that a guilty verdict brings a mandatory death
sentence. Michael Pavelka’s set of an old-fashioned
courthouse jury room, built in the Rep workshops incidentally, right
down to fans that don’t work and windows that struggle to open, gives an
immediate claustrophobic feel and the set's broken ventilation just adds
to the feeling of sweltering, humid New York summer heat, so much
so that when a storm breaks in act two and the windows are streaming
with rain it comes as a cooling relief.
The jurors are a mixed bunch, a bigoted garage
owner, a young man, like the accused, from the projects, an old man,
businessmen, an East European immigrant, a baseball fan who just wants
to get out so he can go to that night’s game and an architect. We never know names, or indeed do we discover
that much about any of the 12 jurors – apart from their assumptions and
their prejudices, which say that the kid must be guilty so let’s vote
and then we can go home. Except that the architect, juror 8, is not so
sure. The open and shut case has not quite been closed for him and
Martin Shaw excels in the role quiet man with no axe to grind slowly and
logically exposing the flaws in the prosecution argument. The key to the whole plot is that juror 8 never
claims the accused teenager is innocent, he freely admits he does not
know, but equally he has not been convinced that he is guilty, the
principle of reasonable doubt. Unlike in Britain, in the USA there are no
majority verdicts in capital cases, so at 11-1 the jurors have to
convince Shaw’s juror 8 of the boy’s guilt, or he has the seemingly
harder task of sowing the seeds of doubt in the minds of the rest of the
jury. While juror 8 sticks to the facts, with forensic
analysis casting doubt on witness statements and physical evidence, the
other jurors expose deep seated prejudices about “them” and “their sort”
from the slums and modern youth with no respect for their parents. We find juror 7, played by Nick Moran, is
somewhat indifferent to the boy’s plight. He is a salesman, selling
marmalade, and has tickets to that night’s baseball game; you get the
feeling he will vote whichever way gets him out of the jury room
fastest. Then there is juror 5, played by Edward Franklin,
who grew up in the slums and is the only one who can really identify
with the accused and his environment, a background that gives him what
turns out to be a vital insight into life on the other side of the tracks. But for the real expert on life and the people
from that other side we are indebted to the garage owner,
juror 10. Miles Richardson gives us a wonderful study in brash,
loud-mouthed bigotry and prejudice, treating the poor and disadvantaged
as a different species, us and them – the feeling is that he sees a
guilty verdict as merely a means of reducing their number by one. While juror 10 wants to reduce the numbers of
"them",
juror 12 is less certain, the only wavering member of the group. He is
an advertising executive, played by Owen O’Neill, who throws in
management-speak homilies about front offices and flagpoles as he flits from guilty to not guilty and back
again. Juror 4, (Paul Anthony-Barber), is a businessman
who, like juror 8 sticks to the facts while juror 11, (Martin Turner),
the naturalised American, is concerned with fairness and democracy - and The first to change his mind though is juror 9, the
oldest of the group, who makes up for lack of youth with the wisdom and
experience that comes with age, rather like the actor who plays him, a member of the Hollywood
aristocracy in Robert Vaughan. The least likely to even consider doubt though is
juror 3, a hard nosed businessman played beautifully by Jeff Fahey, a
father who is trying more than one case in his mind, reaching a verdict
on one accused based on the evidence against another. Nick Moran as juror 7 and Robert Vaughn as juror 9 Keeping order, of sorts, is the foreman,
juror 1, played by Luke Shaw, Martin’s son incidentally, who keeps a
neutral position mindful of his duties as what is in effect chairman
between the two factions, guilty and not guilty. Christopher Haydon’s direction keeps the focus
well and despite the fact it is a single set, not a lot happens in terms
of action and the plot and storyline are explained before you have even
settled in your seat, the production manages a cracking pace, bristling
with tension and explosions of emotion all carried along by that natural
rhythm that is the driving force of all good productions . A good script, clear direction and an excellent
cast mean that the play might be a period piece but is never dated at all,
helped, sadly, by the fact that the prejudice and bigotry Rose
chronicled 50 years ago can still be heard today. The set is lit by Mark Howland who manages to
create a bare, 1950’s office harshness which all adds to what is an
atmospheric staging. I particularly liked the moving jurors' table,
with its 12 seats, which imperceptibly are continuously rotated on a revolving stage
so that the long table inches through 180 degrees in act one and then
moves through 180 degrees again in act two to return to where it
started, reflecting, almost like the old election-night swingometer, how
the voting is changing as the debate goes on. The play started life as a one hour play on CBS
Studio One in 1954, written by staff writer Rose after he had served on
a New York jury but is perhaps best known from the 1957 Henry Fonda
film, again written by Rose. Strangely, for a story set in one fixed scene, it
did not make it to the stage until 1964 and it had to wait until 2004
before it made its Broadway debut. This is a high quality joint production from
Birmingham Rep and Bill Kenwright, with a big cast, completed by Jason
Riddington as the court guard, and is set for a run at The Garrick
Theatre in the West End from November. Catch it before it moves on. To
19-10-13. Roger Clarke
Just for interest here is the original CBS Studio One episode from 1954 from The Internet Archive |
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upholding the US justice system, Juror 6 (Robert Blythe) will listen to
arguments while juror 2 (David Calvitto) seems overawed and takes a
while to have a view.