12 Angry Men, The Lowry, Manchester, 23rd March 2015
If you were to learn that I was a big fan of the 1957 Sidney Lumet movie 12 Angry Men starring Henry Fonda, Lee J Cobb, Martin Balsam and Jack Klugman, you’d probably expect me to like a theatrical iteration. But you should know I am somewhat contrary. Upon learning, for instance that One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was to be transformed into a play a few years ago, I hid underneath my bedclothes for several weeks until the perceived danger had passed. Whenever anyone seeks to engage with something I consider hallowed, I tend to get all defensive. I’m one of those people given to saying things like, ‘why can’t they just leave things well enough alone?’ For me to progress from doubt through cautious optimism to out and out gushiness is both unexpected and unusual. The theatrical version of 12 Angry Men is, I am surprised to say, quite the success.
First, the set. This is a play that makes terrific use of space. The 12 jurors assemble in a large room with three windows looking out over the city. There is a table centre stage (which moves imperceptibly throughout the production so you are never entirely confronted by the back of a single character), and chairs for every man. Outside of the room, to the right, there is a hallway in which a policeman sits for most of the duration of the play. To the left of the room, there is a cubicle where the men go to wash their hands. The story is effortlessly simple: a jury considering their verdict upon a young man who has apparently stabbed his father. 11 of the men consider him guilty, consider it an open and closed case; one of the men, Juror 8 played by Tom Conti, asks that the men think, for more than five minutes, before condemning a man to death. He doesn’t say that he thinks the boy is innocent; he begins by asking the men to just take a moment From here, the involved drama of the play proceeds.
Now: theatre, as a rule, is not an entirely immersive art form. It can’t possibly be. You are sitting in a large room alongside a great many other people as they in turn sit and watch another group of people reciting lines on a stage. It’s different to cinema, which can whack up the volume. Theatre is (or can be) subtle. It sometimes requires silence, or quiet, to make a point. Even with the most considerate audience, a cough, a sneeze or a bit of a chair fidget can be all it takes to tug you out of the action unfolding before you for a moment. This isn’t to say that I haven’t seen wholly immersive plays – Kevin Spacey in the 1998 production of The Iceman Cometh at the Old Vic a few years ago was electrifying – but that immersive theatre tends to be the exception rather than the rule. Know then: 12 Angry Men is as immersive as a good book. There were moments during this performance when I was no longer sitting in a seat in the Lowry, when I was no longer present at all: there was only the play and the question of whether a boy would be found guilty or not.
There are grace notes in the play, moments where the action ratchets up, points scored both explicitly and implicitly. For instance, the majority of the men accept that the boy stabbed his father for three reasons: a knife with an ornate handle was used, and the boy bought a knife with an ornate handle that day; an elderly neighbour down the stairs believes he heard the boy shout he was going to kill his father instants before a sound – what could have been a body falling to the floor – was heard and the boy ran from the house; and a neighbour from across the train tracks believes she saw the boy stab the father. Incontrovertible proof in the eyes of the majority. The men are keen to post their vote and get off. One of the jurors has a ballgame to get to. Another, we learn, is a racist, who considers a guilty verdict one more step on the path to getting rid of ‘them’. Still another, played by Drop the Dead Donkey’s Robert Duncan, calmly and rationally believes the boy to be guilty.
Juror 8 takes his time, dispelling the proofs point by point. The one of a kind knife? It’s easy to buy another on a casual walk through the city. The death threat heard by the elderly neighbour? How did he hear it when a train was passing by outside? The neighbour who saw the murder from across the street? Did anyone see the marks on the side of her nose indicating that she wore glasses? And so – to paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut – it goes.
The apparently ageless Conti is superb in the role Fonda made his own. But this is an ensemble production and the entire cast needs to deliver throughout a highly nuanced and charged two hour run. The pinch points tend to be the moments when characters change their vote, from guilty to not guilty (and back again, as proves to be the case at one point). The seeds of doubt sown by Conti’s Juror 8 take time to germinate and eventually there is one hold-out, the opening of the play reversed and only Juror 3, played by Andrew Lancel, most recently seen in Coronation Street, stubbornly holding on to his Guilty verdict. His capitulation is the only one that doesn’t quite carry the weight of the 10 previous recapitulations. It might be that he just gave in a split second too soon. It might be that a further instant of silence might have added the conviction we needed.
But this is the smallest of qualms. This is a mighty production, worth every cent of your money, every bit of your time. Whether you are a fan of the movie or whether you have never heard the story before, this is a night of theatre that delivers on every front. Highly recommended.
Peter Wild