Twelve Angry Men pleases, but misses opportunity for update

Mandarin drama company Nine Years Theatre lets its actors do the talking in this adaptation of Reginald Rose’s jury classic Twelve Angry Men, initially broadcast as a television play in 1954 before finding a charmed life on the big screen and in numerous re-dos on stage.

- Clement Yong Correspondent

There is something old-school in director Nelson Chia’s take — not unusual — in that it is shorn largely of contemporary gimmicks. The sound effects are almost all diegetic - the whirring of a fan, rain and periods of deliberate, thrumming silence.

As far as this reviewer can tell, there is no multimedia. And so there is a visceral reaction from the audience when the thunderstorm comes down through the stage window, lightning flashes and the later lightening rain burbling as the procedural draws to a close.

The articulate re-adjudication of an alleged murder case by an all-male, 12-member jury is the engine that propels proceedings on this hot, claustrophobic afternoon.

Twelve men in calibrated formal wear from shirt and trousers to fully suited, though one dares a set of suspenders are put in a room for what most of them think will be an open-and-shut guilty verdict, until juror No. 8, played capably by Danny Yeo, dissents.