Twelve Angry Men, a Favorite of the Drama Club, hits the York Stage

Do you, the reader, like courtroom dramas? Do they put you on the edge of your seat? Do you like the film “Twelve Angry Men” starring Henry Fonda & Lee J. Cobb? Well, we don’t have Fonda or Cobb, rather some of our own thespians, like Emerson Graham &/or Regan Wright and Aidan Costanzo &/or Delia Marianetti, but I think this show should suffice.

“Twelve Angry Men” started out as a teledrama written by Reginald Rose and broadcast by CBS in 1954, starring Robert Cummings & Franchot Tone. It was then re-written into a play by Rose in 1955 and has been performed a few times. Finally, it was reworked into a film in 1957 starring the aforementioned Fonda and Cobb. And now, it hits the stage at York!

The plot is rather straight forward and a bit serious. A cast of Twelve people are assembled in a courtroom during either the 1950s or 2023. A 19-year-old is on trial for stabbing his dad to death. At first, everyone but Juror 8 (performed by Emerson Graham or Regan Wright) thinks he’s guilty and slowly but surely, that juror convinces the entire jury that the boy is innocent.

The show includes two different casts, rather par for the course for York shows. However, there is something different in each. For Thursday, you get a more straight-forward adaptation of the show, with it set in a courtroom in the 1950s. The other cast for Friday & Saturday, however, is set in the modern day. In the year 2023, where all of the 1950s characters dead and buried, and yet, a similar case is presented. 

“The cool thing about doing a 1950s version and a 2023 version is that it shows how relevant it is today,” senior  Paige Greve, the Foreman for the Friday Cast in a YTV interview, said. “It’s very interesting.” 

“I think both adaptations work very well,” says Oliver Roy, the Foreman for the Opening Cast. “The original version is, of course, a perfectly written play, I feel. But, the contemporary cast really puts a new spin on it. I feel like they’ve really outdone themselves with it.” 

Most of the people in the Drama Club were very excited for this show. It it apparently the favorite show of one Luke Hanley, the actor playing Juror 9 for the Thursday cast. He went on to say, in regards to the show and the script, “It is a genius piece of literature and the smaller cast and this being a full onsemble piece has made this just such a wonderful thing to work on.” And he wasn’t the only one who spoke about the smaller cast. Oliver Roy says it was a super fun experience. “Working with the smaller cast compared to the other shows,” he claims. “Has really allowed me to bond with my castmates alot more and grow (not only) as an actor but also as a person through the whole experience.” 

The set is rather simple: Just a normal courtroom in the ‘50s. However, according to Roy, everytime they stepped out on stage for rehearsals, they found the set wonderful. And I mean EVERY. TIME. Eventually, Mr Bourke got sick of it, and told them, “Guys, you’ve been in this room before. Stop acting like your seeing rainbows.” 

“It’s this old room that’s very boring,” Roy went on to say. “But we were acting like it was the greatest thing ever.” I guess that shows how good it really is if the actors can find something great about the set everytime.

While the show itself is quite serious, the production wasn’t. 

“The whole process (of making this show) is just doing stuff with friends and goofing off,” says Hanley. “There’s this one time where we did a script change where it had CSI. But CSI didn’t exist in the ‘50. So we changed it to Perry Mason and Aiden Espinosa said, ‘Oh, is that how you pronounce CSI?’ That was good for a laugh.”

The audience also fell in love with the show just as much as the cast did. An anonymous viewer said it was a great show and that the actors, “brought the dynamic of the original film to life.”