Review: 12 Angry Men by City Theatre Company
by Jessica Helmke
A View Inside Deciding
Decisions. We make them everyday. City Theatre's production of 12 Angry Men by Reginald Rose gravely invited audience members to search for truth, as if they were jurors in the murder case.
Vividly depicted characters organized around a long wooden table wore their back stories on their sleeves, and actors balanced their portrayals against one another with the guarded cordiality of an intense game of poker.
This closed and sequestered group of twelve jurors touched on the diversity of all humanity, cornered into making a decision that could end a life. The cast answers an audience silently searching for reasons to establish reason for belief. 'Tell me why,' we star gazers ask when we fill the house. Watching events develop, we get our response, and the conclusion is satisfying and a job well done.
Presented simply, humbly and truthfully, this production is a celebration of Rose's script. Something powerful happens as this ensemble explores its relationship with the text, opening a door for the audience. This is lean, stripped-down acting, theatrical work that's basically artistic commentary about a script and a world that still merits performance today. Nearly 60 years after its first presentations as a 1954 teleplay, a 1955 play and a 1957 feature film, 12 Angry Juror's has dialogue that's still creating an impact with the artists and the audience.
Rose's characters are so sharply differentiated that the exposition of these twelve personalities seemed like presentations by actors working in chosen styles or disciplines.
The accomplishment of this difficult task and the steady building of tension merit a corresponding thoughtful nod from enlightened fans to the actors and to others involved in creation of the work. The audience is held constantly throughout the piece in its own indecision -- should the viewer seek to decide between versions debated on stage? And what about the methods of the twelve characters engaged in the life-and-death debate? Or should we simply appreciate the beauty of their interpretation of the text?
While absorbing the spectrum of personalities around the jury table -- from the diffident and apathetic to the insistent, reaching and ultimately vulnerable -- the audience became both observer and participant. We followed their closed-door debates -- raw, free and human --as they sat separated and alone around the table, finally grasping the task and seeking to do the best thing possible.
Rose's script presents them in traditional me-then-you order, adding starch with stinging dialogue, challenging spectators to choose which assertions were valid and should be retained. Audience responses were strong and the actors reacted to them; spectators had the sensation of participating in the decision process defined by director Karen Sneed, contributing somehow to the closely coordinated and rehearsed action occurring intimately,right in front of them.
City Theatre's 12 Angry Men plays as the playwright's ode to the insistence of a single juror to slow a rush to judgment. Jim Lindsay as the recalcitrant Juror #8 reminded me of a character out of a Tennessee Williams play as he bravely questioned the prosecution's case. Rick Felkins as his adversary, Juror #3, created and sustained the tension, building to the climaxes cannily crafted by the playwright. Particularly notable and sympathetic was John Meadows as Juror #9, the old man, whose thoughtful support for opening debate led to the consideration of the possibility that the boy on trial had been wrongfully accused.
City Theatre's first summer production is a work of suspense, thought, grace and decorum. It plays through June 9.
12 Angry Men
by Reginald Rose
City Theatre Company
