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Wednesday, January 3, 2007
‘Twelve Angry Men’ @ The Fox
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B -
“Boy, oh, boy, there’s always one,” says an irritated juror in the courtroom drama “Twelve Angry Men.” He’s just heard that a fellow panelist favors a not guilty verdict in what everyone thought would be an open-and-shut murder case.
Of course, the naysaying ninny would be played by Richard Thomas, the actor who will forever be known as purple-prosed pollyanna John-Boy, nucleus of the caricaturishly wholesome ’70s TV series “The Waltons.” Thomas leads the road version of the Reginald Rose relic from the 1950s, which made its belated Broadway debut two years ago, courtesy of New York’s Roundabout Theatre Company.
While Thomas acquits himself admirably in the Broadway Across America—Atlanta production that opened Tuesday at the Fox Theatre, his Juror Eight is but one in a sturdy ensemble of character actors that also includes “Cheers” star George Wendt and Alan Mandell, an old Beckett crony who has recently appeared in the films of John Cameron Mitchell.
Director Scott Ellis’s straightforward approach to the creaky script, made into a 1957 film starring Henry Fonda as Juror Eight, doesn’t even try to disguise the datedness of the loud-mouth stock types. It’s a wise choice that accentuates the humor and the timelessness of the social critique.
The faceless 16-year-old boy accused of murdering his father is a symbol of the endless continuum of defendants who become trapped in a legal quagmire because they are too poor to get a fair trial. So much for the beauty of the Constitution: Except for Juror Eight, these guys want to fry the kid and get on with the baseball game.
While Allen Moyer’s set is a perfect facsimile of a sweaty mid-century jury room, Paul Palazzo’s lighting is such that you can’t always see the performers’ emoting faces— until a crucial rainstorm scene in which the lights get switched on. With all eyes focused on Thomas’s Juror Eight as he picks the case apart, this is too bad. But a few performances are so superb that they generate their own electricity.
As the captainlike Juror One, the Humpty Dumpty-size Wendt is first-rate. And Randle Mell, as the angriest man standing, makes for a superb bully. In exposing his personal demons, it’s gratifying to see this Juror Three find a kind of 11th-hour grace.
