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12 Angry Men.
If you've never seen the 1956 movie '12 Angry Men' starring Henry Fonda, you'll have trouble understanding why so many people are excited by the stage version of this seminal work coming to Adelaide as part of the Festival.
Shot in black and white, the movie captures the deliberations in a jury room one stinking hot evening as twelve men - good and true - consider a case of murder. The setting is the jury room; there are twelve actors gathered around a large table, and little else to distract you from proceedings. It's easily one of the most riveting pieces of drama ever committed to film.
Guy Masterson, who has produced about fifty shows for the Edinburgh Festival over the last ten years, mounted '12 Angry Men' for the Edinburgh Festival, where it was a runaway success, and he's pleased as punch to be able to bring it to Australia.
What makes it so talked about? Masterson cast the play with comedians - eleven of them - and one 'actor', mostly, he insists, because of a friends and buddies network.
"Everybody thought 'What a great idea!' and of course the idea took off before the show even opened and it became the hottest selling ticket in Edinburgh," he says cheerfully.
A similar sort of reaction seems to have greeted '12 Angry Men' here in Adelaide - I've lost track of the number of people who've nominated it to me as their 'pick of the Festival'.
"The show opened, and thankfully it was a success. I mean, they could have come gunning for us... the comedians were fantastic, they really were brilliant, and they treated the theatre community with complete and utter respect. It was very good."
When we spoke Masterson was in Perth, preparing for the show's season in that city, and he assured me in a precise English voice he was "... very very laid back, everything is so organised, but it'll get a bit busier when the rest of the cast arrive. They're a boisterous lot."
Speaking of the justifiably famous movie (the screenplay and the stage version were both written by Reginald Rose) Masterson tells me, "When they filmed the Henry Fonda version they started with a much larger set and then gradually reduced and confined it on a daily basis, which is a very interesting tactic." On stage, of course, that can't be done, and the tension which is so much a feature of the story is a little more difficult to imbue... but Masterson insists it's there. "Some features differ, but it's still a very hot room, for example...
"It all swings along at a merry pace; the whole thing is over in 85 minutes - it's a very good piece of drama," he assures me of a drama which is set in real time, so all the jury deliberations are in real time, the jury beginning about 4.40pm, "so the tension is on from the word 'go'." It is curious, in a way, to summate and judge a person in just 90 minutes, but this is the task the jury takes on. In a way, it's, a timeless theme, and of universal application.
"Well exactly," Masterson agrees. "We all have very similar judiciaries under the Westminster system. So this is very much of its time, but what makes it relevant today is... you know I think the issues raised today are those which refer to a large cross section of our society, particularly the racism."
I mention the incarceration rates for Aboriginals, particularly in WA where he is, facts of which he was unaware.
In the movie a young Puerto Rican kid is accused of murder; he's 'from the ghetto' but never identified further, yet definitely from an ethnic minority, and he's referred to as 'one of them'. Such overt racism allows the themes to be as vital in our considerations as when the screenplay was first written, even with changes to our system of justice: that we no longer have the death penalty in this country is the most obvious...
"Technically, you look at those considerations," Masterson says of the jury deliberations, "and they don't hold water. What is said by Juror Number 8, for example - it is certainly unlikely that the father's history would have been allowed into evidence." Scrupulously fair or not, '12 Angry Men' is first and foremost a drama.
"The point is that it works really well, it makes people think, and it's a bloody good entertainment," concludes Masterson.
Alex Wheaton
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'12 Angry Men' plays at the Scott Theatre until Sun 14 March.
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