Making his Broadway debut in The Fear of 13, Adrien Brody portrays the true story of Nick Yarris, a man who spent 22 years on death row for rape and murder before being exonerated by DNA. Under David Cromer’s direction, at the James Earl Jones Theatre, Brody tells that story with anger, humor, empathy and frenetic energy that left me feeling overwhelmed. As my friend, looking equally exhausted, said at the end, “It’s a lot to take in.” Especially in under two hours with no intermission.
This is also Tessa Thompson’s Broadway debut. She offers an engaging portrayal of Jacki Miles, the real life volunteer who visited Yarris weekly in the Pennsylvania prison to offer a bit of humanity in the living hell of a death row existence.
The play is adapted by Lindsey Ferrentino from David Sington’s 2015 documentary about Yarris who, after his conviction, spent more than two decades in solitary confinement until DNA evidence exonerated him following an arduous wait of year after year of up and down hopes as samples made their way through the snail’s pace of the testing process, some being destroyed along the way. The play comes to Broadway following a sold-out run at London’s 250-seat Donmar Warehouse. Brody earned an Olivier Award nomination for his performance.
While Yarris wasn’t guilty of murder, he was on a criminal path when he idiotically through he could get a lesser sentence if he offered the police information about the horrendous murder of a young mother that he read about in a newspaper that had been left behind in his holding cell. He gives them the name of someone he knows who he assumes is capable of such an act but when the man is found to have an airtight alibi the spotlight turns on Yarris.
An excellent 10-member ensemble plays the parts of attorneys, prison inmates and childhood friends. They appear in spotlighted scenes with Brody, scattered around Arnulfo Maldonado’s nearly bare set, with Heather Gilbert’s lighting, as Yarris recounts his saga to Miles. Many of the stories are believable, others sound as if they came from the books he spends his days reading — early on he tell Miles he read 1,000 books in his first three years on death row.
Being in his cell 23 hours a day — he’s allowed one hour for exercise — he has plenty of time to read, especially since Wesley (Ephraim Sykes), the sadistic guard, refuses to allow the condemned men to talk to one another, requiring silence. Time shrinks and expands. As Yarris tells us, “in the blink of an eye 10 years are gone from your life. . . But then you look out the window and it takes all day for the sun to go down.”
The bond between Yarris and Miles deepens during their weekly meetings to the point where she vigorously works to have his case reexamined using DNA that is then available. Eventually they marry, touching only as they slide rings under the prison screen. In real life, they were assisted by The Innocence Project, a nonprofit that works to free people who are wrongly imprisoned. The organization is partnering with the production.
The play’s title is never explained. Harris is one of 13 people to be exonerated from death row; the number 13 has been considered unlucky. Maybe those are behind the name. After he was exonerated in 2003 Yarris wrote several books about his experiences of fighting through that grueling process.
I have long been firmly opposed to the death penalty and have great respect for organizations like The Innocence Project but I found this play to be exhausting. The first show I saw on this topic was The Exonerated in 2000. A-list actors from stage and screen sat in a row at a table onstage and read the harrowing accounts of the xperiences of innocent people wrongly imprisoned. At the end, the real life people came and stood behind them. One man held his beautiful, happy toddler son and they looked like a Gap ad. I was in tears. The creators of the show wisely let the stories speak for themselves rather than further dramatizing them.
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