Those who showed up to the Shubert to see George Wendt, the beloved Norm from “Cheers,” might have gotten a better look a few doors down at the Anchor Bar, where he was spotted earlier this week. His role in the classic Twelve Angry Men is minor, and others just don’t wow as Henry Fonda did, but the play’s still rich with insight into prejudice and pursuasive power.
Reginald Rose’s 12 Angry Men — the famous courtroom drama best known as a 1957 film starring Henry Fonda, is contained within the walls of one stifling jury room. There, 12 men decide the fate of a hard-luck teenage boy on trial for murdering his abusive father. The jurors, who range from clogged-eared yellers to a sharp-eyed, quiet old man, are all convinced of the boy’s guilt, except one. That’s Fonda, Juror #8. Number Eight must hack away at jurors’ preconceptions to persuade them that there’s room for reasonable doubt that the boy stabbed his father to death.
The show, directed by Scott Ellis of New York’s Roundabout Theatre Company, is making its national tour debut in New Haven, running at the Shubert until Sunday.
Wendt, who features prominently on advertising posters, got a huge clap as his broad shoulders passed through the doorway of the Jury Room 2A, onto stage. But we get as much of a glimpse of his acting prowess as fans on Chapel Street did of Uma this week — a sighting from a long way away. As Juror #1, he has the least interesting role. He’s a quiet moderator who, except for one early outburst, mostly just sits on stage and follows suggestions from the more vociferous debaters.
If you wanted to watch Wendt sit in a chair, you could’ve tried the Anchor Bar down the street: Staff say he made himself at home there earlier this week, eating a salad and drinking a glass of wine.
Onstage, the rest of the jurors — including a boisterous eugenicist, an impatient baseball fan, and a stockbroker with no sweat glands — pace and talk in fury around sedentary Wendt.
Richard Thomas, who stars as Juror #8, interprets the role as a nerdy man with somewhat awkward conversational skills. His sense of haste and almost overeager didacticness left this reviewer longing for the smooth-talking Fonda. Fonda counterbalanced the yammering haters with a sense of ease. He took his time to lay down the facts and let others respond.
Even if the actors don’t live up to their Oscar-nominee predecessors, the intricately written play is a pleasure to watch unfold, as the dynamic juror chemistry evolves and the sports-like verbal combat settles into quiet agreement.
At the end of the play, the loudest loudmouth (Juror #3), whose anger at his own son has made him seek vengeance against the defendant, breaks down in a final speech. The performance sends a rush of optimism, relief: Not so much for the convincingness of his teary-eyed collapse, but to hear the room — that so recently rang with bullheaded barking — brought to a hush by empathy and reason.