Cast Does 60% Justice to Revival

Since juries are, basically, us, we tend to puzzle over them. The jury in the O. J. Simpson murder case was for some a classic puzzler, and it would have been interesting to see a revival of Reginald Rose’s drama, “Twelve Angry Men,” at the time of that jury’s verdict.

Rose suggests in his play that juries are human and can be swayed to the side of the hysterical mob or the reasonable individual. Juries are us, and they’re messy, but they should be about justice. The original was written for the 1954 edition of “Studio One,” that hallowed entry in TV’s first “Golden Age,” adapted to the screen in 1957 and for the stage in 1964.

In recent revivals, the “Men” of the title have been altered to reflect the obvious fact that juries aren’t guys’ clubs. The latest retitling is “12 Angry Jurors,” director James Carey’s Attic Theatre Ensemble revival at Players Space in North Hollywood.

The audience sits in single rows surrounding the jury table on all sides to form a kind of arena staging. The jury room guard (Ernie Rock) officiously greets us and takes us to our seats. The lights include a few theatrical spots, but they are mostly fluorescent built into the acoustic tile ceiling, giving everything an institutional glow.

The jury members file in, and though we quickly get a sense of actors trying a bit too hard to create the right mood of slice-of-life realism, they lead us into the heart of this elemental if sometimes elementary drama. The 12 in present-day Chicago are burdened with ruling the death sentence on a teenager charged with murdering his father with a switchblade.

Only one, Juror Eight (Derik Van Derbeken), thinks the teen’s guilt hasn’t been proved. He’s Rose’s voice of open-minded reason, and his job is to convince the other 11 to change their minds or at least doubt their assumptions. His toughest opposition comes from the emotional Juror Three (Kathleen Cecchin), well-dressed and thoughtful Juror Four (Tiffany Hecht), reactionary Juror 10 (Chas Mitchell) and loud-mouthed Juror Seven (Bill Hagy).

The course of eight swaying the others has never convinced this critic--it happens all too quickly, all too conveniently--and the dated nature of the specifics, such as the switchblade, makes the present-day setting more than a bit dicey.

But the interesting side of “Jurors” is watching the quiet ones who stand in the middle, like air-headed Juror Two (Sherry Joerger) or proud immigrant Juror 11 (Tracy Peterson), who in this version has become a black woman from the Caribbean.

With our intimate proximity to these fish in a heated fishbowl, some of the pleasure is watching the understated, even nonverbal, interchanges between the jurors. Still, it takes great actors such as Lee J. Cobb and Henry Fonda to mine Rose’s stagy prose for emotional gold; Carey has decent, though not terrific, actors, and so about 60% of the play’s full power comes through. Van Derbeken and Cecchin are worthy opponents--he with a noble glow in his eyes like a young James Stewart, she with a pure-bred, working-class Chicago accent and swagger.

The presence of Cecchin’s myopic racism has the added benefit of reminding us that with a role initially intended for a man, pigheadedness knows no gender boundaries.

BE THERE

“12 Angry Jurors,” Players Space, 4934 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends April 28. $10. (310) 659-3637. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.