As true crime stories go, Nick Yarris’s tale is stranger than fiction and a dismally familiar trajectory of a man failed by the system. Stopped by a traffic cop in Pennsylvania at the age of 21, he spends more than two decades on death row, sentenced to death by electric chair for a rape and murder he did not commit.
Adrien Brody makes his London debut in the central role in Lindsey Ferrentino’s play, based on a documentary which Yarris narrates (and he is an artful storyteller).
And who better than Brody? For all his Hollywood stardust, he has proved his transformative ability with the most testing of roles, most notably in his Oscar-winning performance of a musician and holocaust survivor in The Pianist.
He is a beguiling presence here but is not given enough space to flex his actorly muscles. Action takes the place of atmosphere. First-person narration, mostly by Yarris, obstructs the buildup of intensity. Nana Mensah, as prison volunteer turned wife, Jackie, narrates her story too but this limited interiority feels functional for delivering the next part of the story.
There is lot of story to get through in under two hours of drama performed straight through, from Yarris’s teen criminality and drug addiction to the revelation of early sexual assault alongside the glaring mishandling of his court case.
He is convicted with no DNA evidence, some autopsy material is destroyed, and other DNA is damaged. He is so despairing at one point that he asks the state to put him to death.
Under the direction of Justin Martin, who masterfully directed legal drama Prima Facie, this play tries to squeeze it all in so that it seems like a whistle-stop narrative of events, rather than a poised, potent dramatisation, with fellow inmates rendered rather faceless.
Lighthearted and comic moments are inserted into some scenes and they are amusing but diffuse the tone and undercut the medieval brutality of Pennsylvania’s penal system. Yarris is confined to silence for two years while thuggish guards, mainly played by Aidan Kelly, routinely beat prisoners and remind them of their soon-to-be-dead status.
Prisoners also play prison guards, police officers, lawyers and family members as Brody narrates. There are enactments of some court scenes, and an almost constant to-ing and fro-ing as characters come on, off or rove around the stage. It is distracting, although it does bring some nifty costume changes.
Miriam Buether’s set features plastic seats with prison numbers around a tiled prison floor and a clanging, metal door. The stage is divided by glass, beyond which we see domestic, non-prison life in Jackie’s home, and it looks like a faraway dream vision, which it is for inmates.
Yarris appears good-natured, cracking jokes, and some earlier ordeals are played almost like criminal capers. It is still a charming performance but does not seem to plumb the depths of Brody’s capabilities.
When the play finally exhausts its story, Brody is allowed the space to embody his character and he produces some incredibly powerful scenes as a result.
Yarris, at the start of the documentary and the play, speaks of the uncanny contortions of time on death row, when a decade vanishes in a blistering flash, and a week feels like forever.
It seems antithetical to the stage to show the dead time of prison life on it but, as engaging as this production is, it could do with slowing things down, pausing longer and deeper on Yarris’s heart and mind.
At Donmar Warehouse, London, until 30 November
Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html
