Reginald Rose's play is more than sixty years old, and while it's still a taut effective drama, it's not, for me, an unimpeachable classic. There are rather a lot of contrivances in getting the events in the jury room to play out, as the jurors, provoked by one man who holds out for "Not Guilty", re-examine both the evidence at the trial and their own prejudices, as people reveal at various points they "just happened to see" some extra fact that opens up the case for further discussion, dropped in ways that don't always feel organic to the conversation as much as they seem like something that can push the play closer to its resolution (and of course, all plays are ultimately contrivances to present events to develop towards an interesting resolution, but in this one the gears are a little too obviously apparent). It feels its age slightly when it gets into issues of race (the out-and-out racist is deliberately kept vague as to what race he's racist against, in a way that definitely feels contrived) and in some unexamined sexism near the end of the play as the one female offstage character referred, a witness to the crime, has her evidence questioned using some fairly iffy dimestore psychology. And it does have a few moments when it confuses drama with "Everybody yells at each other a lot" in ways that feel a bit like pointless machismo.
Having said that, it's a well known play and one where the title will sell tickets (while one of the alternate-gendered variants on the title "Twelve Angry Women" or "Twelve Angry Jurors" might not), so I understand the marketing decision to do it (and, well, other people probably don't have my nitpicks so they may actually like it anyway). And Everyman's production is mostly a pretty effective one - performed in the round, from my seat (midway down the table) everything was audible and clear (I understand reports have varied between performances). In a cast of 12 (well, 13 including baliff), I'm not going to list everyone, but I will pick out a couple. Certainly it's good to have Isaac Reily back onstage after way too long a gap as the inciting juror number 8 - in a performance that's precise, sturdy and solid as he picks away at each of his fellow jurors towards finding some level of certainty. As his chief antagonist, Rob DeFries combines surface charm with under-the-surface-bitterness as it becomes increasingly obvious what hidden agendas are driving him. Elsewhere around the table there's a mix of familiar and unfamiliar performers, with most serving their characters reasonably (although I tend to think most of the characters are written pretty thinly with maybe only one or two personality traits, and not everyone really managed to conceal that to bring us something that felt a bit more rounded). The points where the tension boils over and fights get louder tended to feel a bit messy - movement and focus became unclear and it all became a bit of undifferentiated yelling.
All in all, despite the in-the-round approach this did feel a little bit distanced - both by the decision to keep it based in the US in the 50s, by my own issues with the script, and by a performance style that keeps this very "classic movie" - this isn't a production that surprises anywhere except in the curtain call music (I did love the curtain call music). Everybody's doing what they're doing pretty well, it's just ... I didn't often have that sense of discovery or being taken away in the moment. And that's kinda why I go to the theatre.
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