Twelve Angry Men: The Boys are Back in Town

There's a special kind of theatrical thrill you get just a few minutes into the Roundabout's engrossing new production of Reginald Rose's jury room drama Twelve Angry Men. As the recorded voice of Robert Prosky as a judge routinely gives final instructions, a guard (Matte Osian) goes through the perfunctory motions of preparing the on stage jury room. Then it happens. The door opens and Mark Blum, as the foreman who's already dreading what he's about to be in for, leads his eleven colleagues onto the stage for 90 minutes of ensemble work by an all-star team of accomplished Broadway actors. Phillip Bosco, Boyd Gaines, Tom Aldredge, Peter Friedman... They could all ride the subway from New Lots Avenue to 242nd Street without anyone knowing they're in the presence of a fine stage actor. But the enthusiastic applause from a knowledgeable theatre crowd that greets their parade onto the stage, each portrayal already dripping with backstory, tells you the home team has taken the field and the audience is psyched to watch 'em play ball.

Twelve Angry Men is not exactly a great play -- it's certainly an entertaining, well-crafted one and a fascinating artifact from the 1950's -- but it's a play that can showcase some great theatre. The familiar story, which has been parodied countless times (I recall an episode of The Andy Griffith Show where Aunt Bea was in a similar situation.), begins with eleven jurors on a murder case, where the death penalty is mandatory for a guilty verdict, believing the defendant, a 16-year-old boy, is guilty of killing his abusive father. The one holdout juror has what he believes to be reasonable doubts and gradually sways the rest to vote "not guilty". (I'm not giving anything away by telling you the ending. He'd better sway them all to vote "not guilty" or there'd be no reason for the play.) The hour and a half of deliberations reveals aspects of each juror's background, prejudices and even a deep, dark secret or two.

Originally written as the teleplay for a live 1954 fifty minute dramatic broadcast, Rose had very little time to tell his story and argue his issues while developing twelve characters. Even when expanded to a 96 minute feature film, the screenplay of which provides the source for this stage adaptation, you know very little about the twelve people who are going to decide if this boy will live or die. They go by the names juror #1, juror #2, etc. and their characters can usually be summed up with phrases like "the wise guy", "the foreign-born one" or "the bigot". The success of the piece depends on a director and cast who can flesh out unique characteristics of each broad-stroked character while keeping them functioning as a unit, almost as though they are twelve parts of the same mind debating the situation. Director Scott Ellis has his boys working in tandem on a multi-textured verbal ballet with just enough movement to make for some exciting visual pictures that had the audience Oooo-ing and Ohooo-ing.

Rose's script often favors good blue-collar drama over realism. You can just imagine Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton with eyes glued to a tiny black and white TV screen, completely caught up with the deconstruction of the crime. Although sentiment leans heavily toward a "not guilty" vote, it still seems very likely (just not completely provable) at the end of the play that the kid did it. Perhaps the all white jury says more about the hiring practices of 1950's television and movies than our legal system, but it also allows the characters to be freer with their opinions in this case involving a defendant, a victim and a witness who are all of an undisclosed minority race. (They're referred to by one character as "those people".) And even though schools and community theatres often perform the play as Twelve Angry Men and Women the author's unrealistic premise that the jury is an all boys club also helps keep emotions unchecked. The gender and racial politics that would surface with a multi-ethnic cast of men and women, especially in the mid-1950's, simply could not be explored sufficiently within the play's original fifty minute limit.

Twelve Angry Men was created in a time when the easy answer was that there are good guys and bad guys who are either right or wrong and if your opinion strays from that of the majority you're either a wack job or a dangerous radical. Sentiments which have not completely vanished as of yet. Rose's plays simply asks us to question and fully explore the other side. As the lone juror explains to the others, he's not saying they're wrong -- just asking them to consider why someone who disagrees thinks he's right.

Photos by Joan Marcus
Top: (l-r) Kevin Geer, Philip Bosco, Michael Mastro, Adam Trese, John Pankow, Peter Friedman, Larry Bryggman
Bottom: (l-r) Mark Blum, James Rebhorn, Kevin Geer, Boyd Gaines, Philip Bosco, Michael Mastro, Robert Clohessy, Peter Friedman, Adam Trese, John Pankow, Tom Aldredge, Larry Bryggman

For more information visit roundabouttheatre.org

For more from Michael Dale visit dry2olives.com