It's 1954 in a tired, old, grubby, and stuffy New York County Supreme court where 12 random men gather as a jury to determine the fate of an inner-city teenager accused of murdering his father in Reginald Rose’s incredibly tense and compelling play, '12 Angry Men'. Is the boy guilty? Can these 12 strangers from varying backgrounds, each with their own perceptions and prejudices come together to form a unanimous decision? This is what Rose’s intelligently written play guides you through over a well structured and pacey 2 hours.
What first strikes you as you settle into the production is the attention to detail captured within the set. Using 4 different areas of the stage, the designers here have utilised space incredibly well to ensure the actors have plenty of space to move about in a natural fashion. The metal structure of the main room, along with the tired old wooden doors and window frames provided an effective frame for the main room and created an illusion of the jurors being boxed in, which only added to the tension. I also enjoyed the bathroom area, in particular the 2 basins which, from the audience's perspective, showed you the inner workings of the plumbing system. A metaphor perhaps for the play itself and inner workings of what goes on behind the jurors' door during deliberations. The production team also captured effective weather effects as the rain kicked in after the long hot baking day suffered by the characters. Whilst the rain effects on the window were very convincingly executed, I did feel the lighting switched rather quickly from hot weather to storm and could have been slowed down somewhat. Whilst the lightening effect was stark and captured attention as the storm kicked in, I feel it would have benefited from concealing the stage light used for this effect to keep the sense of realism captured elsewhere on the stage up to that point. Both of these lighting cues took away slightly from the realism captured consistently in other areas of this production.
Costumes were excellent and perfectly fitting to add to each characters' personality. From the well-chosen loafers, hats, and braces to the waistcoat or the dominating black suit wore by Juror 4, this showed careful consideration by the wardrobe department and was another strong contributing factor to the realism captured within this production.
This particular production relies on an ensemble effort and here you can see the director had worked well with his individual cast, in the main to ensure each one was a fully developed character, different from the next but always ensuring movement and interactions were handled with authenticity. With a slow-moving revolve standardly utilised in this production, well-spaced-out chairs, benches and the water-cooler, the director ensured that movement was fluid and avoided being static which could have been be a real pace-killer in this production. As it was, the pace was excellent and kept the audience engaged throughout.
Also great to see the director realising some of the humour within the script and pulling this out to provide some welcome breaks from the mounting tension. The horse-racing commentary delivered by Juror 7 was a highlight here. If I were to offer one area for consideration, it would be to suggest more realistic and authentic action “fight” sequences. The end of Act 1’s glimpse of the pot boiling over and one juror attempting to attack another was very slow and overly contrived and not at all consistent with the authenticity captured within the reast of the place. Moments like this were the only times the production felt staged and not realistic as captured for the rest of its part.
Overall, the acting talent on display in this production was of a very high calibre and I particularly enjoyed the characters brought to life by Mr Greco and Mr Merrells. As mentioned before, this is an ensemble piece and all the working parts needed to be on point, however these 2 actors ripped every moment of their character arcs out with aplomb. Other roles were well formed, and you could see the attitudes and individual perspectives displayed well enough through body language and tonality, good use of pauses and some excellent background acting which only added further to both the atmosphere and the pace of the production; there was always something to watch wherever you looked.
However, I (along with a few people in the bar at the interval) found Juror 4’s diction hard to follow or understand at times, and whilst one could follow the gist of what was being conveyed, it required more effort to follow exactly what was being said. I also found Juror 10’s performance vere slightly into caricature and at times slightly less convincing than the other characters presented. Some of the outbursts and elongation of words along with the gravelly voice utilised at times felt over-played, where in moments such as the breakdown at the end of Act 2 and the realisation he is bringing his own prejudice of his own broken relationship with his son into his decision making, could have been played much slower and considered to produce a more empathetic and arguably authentic end to this characters arc.
Despite a few minor criticisms (which should not distract anyone from this well put together production), the audience and myself thoroughly enjoyed this production which demonstrated excellent collaboration from all involved. 2 hours of live theatre well spent. Thank you as ever to the very welcoming staff at the Grand Theatre.
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