Twelve Angry Men. One Satisfied Viewer.

Roundabout Theatre Company's Twelve Angry Men, a hit on Broadway now showing at the Ahmanson Theatre until May 6th, is a play for our time. Maybe too much for our time for the play's own good. It's become such a standard repertory piece that we pretty much need to be awed in order to be truly won over, which is suprising since this 1957 play initially shocked audiences with its raw portrayal of racial hypocrisy in the Land of the Free.

Pay close attention, however, and you'll still be able to find moments of intense insight into how subtlely racism can undermine even the most objective analysis, depicted especially when our Ivy League-educated Juror Eight must continually reiterate and justify his own qualms about the validity of the state's case. At several moments in the action, this performance allows us to share a bit of the general air of inevitability and resignation surrounding the case, a mood accentuated by the depressingly-nondescript design of Jury Room 2A, complete with the monotony of wall-to-wall forest green-and-black floor tiling which looks as though it were imported directly from the nearest DMV bureau. Kafka-meets-midcentury Manhattan, indeed.

George Wendt is perfectly-cast as the foreman; however, not to sound too much the theatre purist, but do we always need to applaud the appearance of a T.V. celeb in a stage production? Every actor in this show gave a stellar performance, yet when the jurors were introduced, only the two that had been on television received an introductory applause. Didn't Shakespeare tell us the play's the thing? Or am I just fighting the inevitable fact that theatre has become more or less an adjunct of television and film?

What's more, I was able to get a ticket two hours before the show for twenty dollars. At that price, I might just go back for an encore performance.