Courting justice

Merrimack buffs up Twelve Angry Men

by Scott T. Cummings

TWELVE ANGRY MEN, By Reginald Rose. Directed by David G. Kent. Set design by Erhard Rom. Costumes by Frances Nelson McSherry. Lighting by Kendall Smith. With Earl Baker Jr., Gilbert Cruz, Michael Dorval, Joshua Finkel, Tim Gregory, Joe Holt, Les J.N. Mau, Steve Monés, Michael Poisson, Scott Richards, Geddeth Smith, Joe Smith, and Frank T. Wells. At the Merrimack Repertory Theatre, Lowell, Wednesday through Sunday through March 7.

To a jaded eye, American jurisprudence in the 1990s has become just another voyeuristic form of popular entertainment. But there is at least one sanctum the omnivorous television camera has not penetrated yet: the jury room. Perhaps this explains some of the appeal of Reginald Rose's Twelve Angry Men, a 1950s courtroom drama now on view in an accomplished and patriotic production at Merrimack Repertory Theatre.

Twelve Angry Men started out in 1954 as an Emmy-winning teleplay. Sidney Lumet made his Hollywood debut when he directed the celebrated 1957 film version starring Henry Fonda. Rose adapted his script for the stage in 1962 and then, much later, updated it for a 1997 film remake directed by William Friedkin. The story's staying power stems from its infectious fascination with the sound of justice's grinding wheels and its wind-it-up-and-watch-it-go craftsmanship, both of which are well translated to the Merrimack stage.

The play takes place late one hot summer afternoon in a New York City jury room where 12 men gather to reach a verdict in what seems like an open-and-shut murder case involving a ghetto kid who killed his father. However, when the jury is polled at the start, one man (Juror 8) votes "not guilty." To the chagrin of his peers, he is not so sure and wants to review the evidence. A few minutes later, when Juror 8 produces a switchblade that matches the supposedly one-of-a-kind murder weapon, we know where this play is headed. Reasonable doubt spreads from juror to juror like a virus, and each time a new vote is taken the total shifts away from conviction toward acquittal. The only genuine suspense is who the last holdout will be and what it will take to flip him before Truth, Justice, and the American Way can prevail.

Director David G. Kent offsets the play's predictability and punches up its concern with racism through nontraditional casting. The 1954 teleplay and the 1957 film featured all-white casts. Like the 1997 remake, Kent makes his jury more racially and ethnically diverse. Friedkin, though, brought the action all the way into the 1990s; Kent sets his rendering explicitly in 1965, in the middle of the Vietnam War, the civil-rights movement, and the Johnson administration. In this period, the multicultural jury seems like a bit of wishful revisionism or, worse yet, a PC anachronism. Kent has distributed the roles to his rainbow cast so that the jurors of color are among the first half-dozen to change their votes.

But the ensemble cast are first-rate from top to bottom. Kent has cast them and costume designer Frances Nelson McSherry has outfitted them to maximize the variety of male types on stage. The actors add a naturalistic ease, an individual flair, and an earnestness of character that ratchets up the tension as the deliberations drag on. Kent orchestrates the action with a deft hand, motivating enough movement to keep the play from getting static and isolating characters at crucial moments. He starts the play with Juror 8 seated downstage with his back to the audience, just one of the anonymous 12, looking upstage at his fellow citizens just as we are.

Scenic designer Erhard Rom provides a worse-for-wear jury room that is delightfully rich in atmosphere. Stains from blown radiator pipes streak the walls. Institutional-green paint peels from the plaster. Dusty old Venetian blinds hang crookedly in front of windows clouded by urban soot. The period detail is so thorough and so convincing that it makes a wrinkle in time stick out: the authentic glug-glug water cooler is accompanied by plastic disposable cups. Wouldn't they be paper cups, maybe the white cone-shaped kind?

This decision by Kent and Rom to make the jury room so worn and torn might have suggested a criminal-justice system in a state of decay or disrepair, but the production registers as a two-hour paean to reasonable doubt, equal justice, and the honor of dissent. To cap it off, the evening ends on a smug note of nostalgia that brings many in the audience to their feet. As the jurors file out to report their "not guilty" verdict, we hear a speech from LBJ in which he articulates his vision for "the Great Society." Without apparent irony, Kent links the melodramatic triumph of poetic justice in the play to the pursuit of social justice that defined the 1960s. Good old-fashioned liberalism can be as American, it seems, and as cloying, as apple pie.