12 Angry Men — By 12 Impassioned Women
Reviewed by Taylor Kass
Promenade Playhouse
Through June 15
In 2013, an all-female jury acquitted George Zimmerman of second-degree murder and manslaughter after he fatally shot unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin. At Promenade Playhouse, another all-female jury is deliberating a homicide case in a cross-gender cast production of 12 Angry Men, Reginald Rose’s iconic made-for-TV drama. Natalia Lazarus directs this fully staged production, first presented in April as a series of dramatized readings by 12000 Voices, a voter initiative organization.
12 Angry Men can be a riveting play. It has suspense, secrets revealed, a clear conflict, moral quandaries, and characters whose personalities are primed to create friction. 12 Angry Men can also veer towards the tedious. It takes place in a single room over the course of a single evening; its arguments are often more theoretical than personal; and its hyper-realistic style places the entire weight of the production on the acting chops of its ensemble.
The pacing, painfully slow for a play that relies so heavily on clear, energetic language, is further decelerated by obviously flubbed or unintentionally overlapping lines. According to the program, this is supposed to be a 12 Angry Men set “Now” and in “Any Metropolitan City”. But that requires glossing over details in the script that point to its placement in New York (an elevated train, a plethora of tenements) in the mid-20th century — an era when the death penalty was imposed more frequently than now and DNA evidence was not yet available. Attempts to update the story, such as having Juror #7 (a punchy and endlessly watchable Nicolette Brockington) insist on making it out of the courthouse in time to see Hamilton, only serve to muddle the basic plot points of the play.
Just as 12 Angry Men revealed to us the darkness that emerges in men when they hold sway over another’s life, an all-female cast shows us there is darkness inside women too. There can be ugliness, racism, intolerance and anger. American society tells women that they are allowed to be impassioned, but that they shouldn’t be angry. This production underscores this point brilliantly when Juror #2 (Vallan Vaughn) explains that she is more inclined to agree with Juror #8 (a spectacularly incisive Diana Cabuto) than Juror #3 (a volatile and commanding Valentina Latyna) because #8 is calm and rational while #3 is angry and emotional. It is also both unnerving and thought-provoking to see traits of toxic masculinity expressed in a woman, such as when Juror #3 relates with almost sadistic relish how she hit her son for showing weakness in a fight, or when she charges at Juror #8 in a rage.
There may be a political statement in casting 12 female actors in this originally all-male drama, but if there is, this production hasn’t articulated it. Casting women instead of men might have established a perfect opportunity to explore both the effective and ineffective ways women communicate with each other in male-created spaces. Instead, under Lazarus’s direction, Promenade Playhouse delivers a low-energy, quasi-updated production that is confusing and unspecific in its focus. It replaces “angry” with “impassioned”, and dilutes the vitriol that makes 12 Angry Men not only a landmark American play, but an unflinching look at the most noble — and most evil — aspects of human nature.
Promenade Playhouse, 1404 3rd St. Promenade, Santa Monica; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; through Jun. 15 (Note: dark on Memorial Day weekend). (310) 656-8070 or www.promenadeplayhouse.com. Running time: 105 minutes with no intermission.
