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Adrien Brody and Tessa Thompson make affecting Broadway debuts successful The Fear of 13, Lindsey Ferrentino’s based-on-a-true-story play astir a falsely accused decease statement inmate and nan female who loves him from nan different broadside of nan bullet-proof glass.
Alternately aggravated and tender, Brody’s Olivier-winning performance, contempt immoderate choices that tin consciousness a spot for illustration strutting, elevates what successful nan extremity is an appalling yet sadly not uncommon wrongful condemnation communicative successful which a man – a low-level Philadelphia car thief named Nick Yarris, astatine slightest arsenic troubled arsenic he is simply a troublemaker – lands a decease condemnation for a rape and execution we soon study he didn’t perpetrate (Ferrentino wastes small clip connected nan did-he-or-didn’t-he mobility – he didn’t, aliases location wouldn’t beryllium a play).
Based connected a 2015 British documentary astir Yarris by head David Sington, successful which Yarris is nan sole presence, relating his communicative to nan camera, The Fear of 13 – much astir nan title later – expands nan communicative to see different inmates, immoderate standard-issue sadistic situation guards and, astir importantly, a jailhouse unpaid who falls successful emotion pinch nan charismatic Nick contempt her protestations to nan assemblage that, yes, she’s alert of really this each looks and no, she’s not 1 of those women who fetishize nan imprisoned.
Except, well, isn’t she? Ferrentino wants america to deliberation otherwise, and nan real-life inspiration for nan characteristic mightiness person a convincing communicative to tell, but nan closest we get to immoderate likelier mentation is simply a blatant spot of lampshading – that instrumentality of bluntly calling attraction to a narrative’s implausibility aliases inconsistency successful bid to de-fang it. Jacki (sweetly played by Thompson, whose credits see nan wildly celebrated Avengers franchise) assures america she’s nary jailhouse groupie.
But until a mid-play uncover that Nick didn’t do it, Jacki must assume, aliases astatine slightest consider, that she’s being wooed by a man who brutally raped and murdered a young mother of two. She herself has seen nan autopsy photos, she’s fresh nan newspaper clippings. No matter. “I americium not that person,” she insists. And nan play moves on.
Then there’s Lampshade #2: While The Fear of 13 has collaborated pinch nan Innocence Project, a unpaid statement that uses DNA to thief exonerate nan wrongfully convicted and combat group bias successful a strategy that disproportionately targets Black Americans, race, arsenic a subject, remains defiantly absent from this play. “If I’m going to constitute astir somebody,” Jacki says during 1 of her galore telephone calls pinch Nick, “it astir apt shouldn’t beryllium a achromatic guy.” Lampshade erected, she and Fear, once again, move on.
What Ferrentino and head Cromer get correct though is conveying nan absurdly, cruelly drawn-out grinding of justice’s wheels, aliases much accurately here, injustice’s wheels. Long years walk betwixt appeals and responses and papers mislaid aliases burst open(!) successful nan mail. The transition of clip is cleverly conveyed done a assortment of devices, from nan sitcoms connected Jacki’s TV surface (Cheers gives measurement to Seinfeld) and nan property of nan (offstage) canine that Jacki hopes to someday stock and raise pinch a freed Nick.
Still, arsenic 1 judicial hold follows another, our very morganatic vexation pinch an inhumane ineligible strategy originates to consciousness for illustration vexation pinch a communicative that mirrors Lucy, Charlie Brown and that ever-proffered football. At nan reviewed performance, location seemed to beryllium immoderate exasperated assemblage “ughs” among intended dejected gasps.
Those pacing blips aren’t nan only groaners. The depictions of nan baton-wielding, pain-inflicting situation guards mightiness good beryllium meticulous to Yarris’ testimony, but onstage they look for illustration truthful galore outtakes from Cool Hand Luke. (A late-in-coming infinitesimal of grace for nan astir heinous of nan guards is arsenic wrong-headed arsenic it is cringy). The jailhouse tropes widen to Nick’s chap inmates who singing for illustration angels. No, better, for illustration Temptations.
In his Broadway debut, Brody brings nan aforesaid strength and hangdog vulnerability that underscore his champion movie performances, and if his hip-hop Yo! MTV Raps street mannerisms look an actorly affectation successful flashback scenes group successful 1970s Philly, he comes remarkably adjacent to making Nick’s entreaty astatine slightest somewhat reliable (even erstwhile he’s recounting a kidnapping for laughs).
Still, when The Fear of 13 finally arrives astatine thing adjacent to Nick’s Rosebud revelation, we’re meant to link nan dots betwixt past trauma and existent predicament, and it is simply a tenuous relationship astatine best, a imaginable origin for an effect we’ve been told many times to distrust. The climactic scene, group amidst a downpour evocatively conveyed connected nan moody, spare, grid-like and often pitch-dark group (Arnulfo Maldonado is nan scenic designer, pinch lighting creation by Heather Gilbert), does supply a deeper meaning to nan play’s title beyond nan connection – triskaidekaphobia – that Nick taught himself successful situation (no spoilers), but if it’s meant, arsenic it seems to be, to someway explicate nan beginnings of outlaw behaviour and characteristic faults that sewage Nick successful deeper h2o than he ever could person imagined, we’re near pinch nan unsettling emotion that The Fear of 13 is asking nan unfortunate to enarthrosis astatine slightest a modicum of nan blasted that should autumn wholly connected a grossly unfair system, and there’s nary justness successful that.
Title: The Fear of 13
Venue: Broadway’s James Earl Jones Theater
Written By: Lindsey Ferrentino (Based connected nan documentary directed by David Sington)
Directed By: David Cromer
Cast: Adrien Brody, Tessa Thompson, Ephraim Sykes, Michael Cavinder, Eddie Cooper, Victor Cruz, Eboni Flowers, Joel Marsh Garland, Jared Wayne Gladly, Joe Joseph, Jeb Kreager, Ben Thompson
Running Time: 1 hr 50 min (no intermission)
