Kick My Shins and Call Me Miss-Trial: 12 Angry Jurors!

Nick Charles Currie - Staff Writer

Last month, the Acting Conservatory produced 12 Angry Jurors, a courtroom drama by Reginald Rose. Directed by Colin Martin, the play explores racial and class biases and he effect they can have on people’s lives.

In the play, Juror Eight, played by Alyssa Tuohy (ACT 11) and Tyler Gebo (ACT 11), manages to convince the rest of the jury that the accused teen is not guilty of killing his father. Convincing everyone, from the old Juror Nine, played by Cloyce Martin (CAH 12) and Nena Oshita (ACT 10), to the hardhearted, volatile Juror Three, played by Golden Bachelder (ACT 12) and Emma Calcagnini (ACT 11), takes a lot of circumstantial evidence that doesn’t line up very well in reality. Although at times I had to suspend my disbelief, the actors helped with that, wholly believing their stories through the entire play.

While the acting was very strong, the plot is not at all realistic. Ignoring that Juror Eight bringing her own evidence to the courtroom would have them thrown out in an instant and send the jury into retrial, the likelihood that all of the evidence she proposed was actually true was extremely low. While the knife was not nearly as rare as the court had believed, it alone does not constitute reasonable doubt.

The plot may have those issues and many others, but the play was very tense and kept the audience on the edge of our seats the entire time, which wouldn’t have happened if not for the acting and direction. The cast that I saw was a mix of the two normal casts, so many of the actors were not used to playing with each other, however, I didn’t catch any mistakes in blocking that arose from their inexperience together. That was particularly impressive in the more physical interactions between Jurors Three and Eight, played by Bachelder and Tuohy respectively. Their cohesiveness together despite not typically working together was very impressive

Despite the issues in the plot, the play itself was very good, due to the actors’ skill. I had been entranced by the play despite knowing the suspense-driven plot largely due to the convincing acting.