‘The Fear of 13’ Theater Evaluate: Adrien Brody in Demise Row Drama

Righteous indignation over the travesty of the American justice system and staunch advocacy towards wrongful incarceration make it pure to need to applaud The Fear of 13. The identical goes for Adrien Brody’s intensely wrought efficiency as Nick Yarris, who spent 22 years on demise row in Pennsylvania for a homicide and rape he didn’t commit. 

Lindsey Ferrentino’s one-act play is predicated on a 2015 documentary of the identical identify by British filmmaker David Sington, by which Yarris proves a commanding narrator of his personal steadily discursive story. But on stage, it’s a clumsy combine, with lots of monotonously earnest direct tackle and too few dramatized scenes to lend it vitality.

The play was well-received in its London premiere two years in the past on the extra intimate 250-seat Donmar Warehouse in a unique manufacturing that additionally starred Brody. Broadway director David Cromer presumably has needed to scale up for an area with a capability of simply over 1,000, which does the lumpy materials no favors.

Sadly, nor does the casting of Tessa Thompson as Jacki Miles, the volunteer whose visits evolve right into a relationship earlier than she ultimately turns into Nick’s spouse. Thompson’s efficiency is okay, however the chemistry between the leads is stiff and unconvincing.

While Jacki serves as a immediate to coax the voluble Nick’s story out of him and observe the maddening vicissitudes of his bungled court docket case and broken DNA proof, she additionally makes a lot of the play an train in dueling narrators. The cumbersome supply system provides neither actor a lot room to discover their characters’ psychological wiring or construct dramatic momentum. A narrative that ought to be taut as an alternative is talky and static, distinctly missing in rigidity.

There’s additionally a powerful sense that Ferrentino — who already had one flop on Broadway this season with one other doc adaptation, The Queen of Versailles — has not discovered the fabric’s ultimate kind. Nick is such a verbose raconteur, expounding on his personal historical past and the experiences he has witnessed in jail, that the character appears uniquely suited to a solo present. 

Jacki doesn’t carry sufficient of another perspective; the cartoonishly thuggish guards are a distraction; and the opposite prisoners are window dressing. The chief exception is a quick thread by which Nick recollects a young love story between fellow inmates Wesley (Ephraim Sykes) and Butch (Michael Cavinder), which provides the golden-voiced Sykes a track. But even Arnulfo Maldonado’s austere principal set appears conceived for a one-person play, creating an unlimited expanse of lifeless area across the actors, in contrast to the claustrophobic staging in London.

Yarris’ story is a outstanding one and Brody actually throws himself into the retelling, from Nick’s teen years, busting automobiles for drug cash, to the site visitors cease that went awry, resulting in his arrest and conviction on wrongful expenses. He goes over the mishandled court docket case, the destruction of key post-mortem materials and the preliminary botched try to course of DNA samples. Each setback means extra years of ready in limbo, making time, as a lot as injustice, a central theme.

The drama opens up a bit of when Nick impulsively seizes a chance to flee whereas being transported to an enchantment trial. He finally ends up on a bicycle in New York City gulping down the style of short-lived freedom. His tales are so picaresque that Jacki is uncertain typically of the road between truth and embellishment. But she later learns that his story is generally true. The main revelation is a traumatic episode throughout which he was sexually abused as a baby.

At one level Nick’s protracted wait turns into so agonizing that he petitions the state to set an execution date. He is subsequently cleared of all expenses after conclusive DNA proof proves his innocence. That ought to make for a robust indictment of a authorized system by which a person’s life will be placed on maintain for greater than 20 years due to the ineptitude of legislation enforcement and the judiciary. But Ferrentino struggles to synthesize the true story’s bigger themes, so even when Brody has some affecting moments within the closing scenes, the play is flat, emotionally ineffectual.

It’s a disappointment that two actors as gifted as Brody and Thompson ought to make their Broadway debuts in such a bland, poorly conceived car. At shut to 2 hours with no intermission, it numbs each the mind and the butt. 

Venue: James Earl Jones Theatre, New York
Cast: Adrien Brody, Tessa Thompson, Ephraim Sykes, Joel Marsh Garland, Jeb Kreager, Victor Cruz, Michael Cavinder, Eddie Cooper, Eboni Flowers, Jared Wayne Gladly, Joe Joseph, Ben Thompson
Director: David Cromer
Playwright: Lindsey Ferrentino, based mostly on the documentary directed by David Sington
Set designer: Arnulfo Maldonado
Costume designer: Sarah Laux
Lighting designer: Heather Gilbert
Sound designer: Lee Kinney
Presented by Seaview, Wessex Grove, Gavin Kalin Productions, Storykey Entertainment, Pam Hurst-Della Pietria, Steven Della Pietria