The Kings Theatre, Edinburgh

23-28 Feb

19.30 (mat wed & sat)

Twelve Angry Men is the story of a court case based quite uniquely around the Jury, who deliberate the case in a locked room. The set is sparse : a table in the middle, three large windows hung at the back & a toilet off to the left for those intimate, private conversations. These, & all the rest of the dialogue I found to be flowing flawless through out the whole production. The crime in question revolves about the murder of man, whose son is in the dock for the deed. To my mind, it seemed that unless it was a set up, the kid was bang to rights –  but Tom Conti’s character does not see it this way at all. The whole jury is swayed in the end but it is a battle of wills. One fellow uses brute force & threats of violence, while Conti, more detective than juror, Conti questions all the facts, whose accent and stage presence made me think him a Columbo – all that was missing was his cigar.

Of the actors, Conti is the most well-known, but definitely not the best of the players on offer, drawn from a cross-section of society. New York testosterone, for instance, is depicted pitch-perfectly by Andrew Lancell, whose character just wants to see the lad in the chair so he can get home to see ‘the game.’  Ominously enough there are no women, in fact not even an effeminate man – a portrait of the times in which the script was written about and thankfully not indicative of the present. If it had been women, I imagine there would have been a lot more bitching in the toilets! FOUR STARS

Reviewer : Sarah Marshall