THE EXONERATED. To 11 June.

London

THE EXONERATED
by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen.

Riverside Studios (Studio ) To 11 June 2006.
Tue-Sat 7.45pm Sun 4pm & 7.45pm.
Runs 1hr 40min No interval.

TICKETS: 020 8237 1111.
www.riverside studios.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 5 February.

Stories of the ones who got away – eventually.
Every word spoken in this performance comes from documented sources: court transcripts, depositions, interviews. That should pose a lot of questions. How much is added to the words of convicted murderers, kept for years (sometimes decades) on American death-rows, by the actors who present them? Does this pause, that intonation or cadence come from the original speaker? How can it, if the source is written? Actors are expert at empathising with their character and at conveying a natural or assumed charm. Are they, in effect, “acquitting” their characters?

The question here’s irrelevant; the US justice system has already acquitted these men (usually), picked up by chance or assumption of guilt, then often tricked, bullied or fatigued into confessing what never happened. Here is evidence of police who want convictions more than to find perpetrators and courts where justice goes by cost of attorney, where populist smears count as argument: “let’s let all the freaks and perverts and murderous homosexuals of the world know what we do with them in a court of justice.”

This is the language of a moral crusade, ultimately based on fear. And these people are those who make the silent majority silently scream in fear: Black people, gay people. And a vegetarian ex-hippy.

That’s Sunny Jacobs, the only woman among the exonerated (the production has a rolling-cast, with Sunny playing herself at some performances). She and her common-law husband were found guilty of murdering 2 policemen. The evidence (as the court weren’t told) came in a plea-bargain from the killer. 3 years later he confessed; it took 13 more years for the justice system to free Sunny.

Performed in a straight line-up, by actors sitting behind lecterns with microphones, this piece has a restrained intensity that puts standard Hollywood emoting to shame, And it shines light through the darkness. There’s no glib sub-Dostoyevskyan ‘suffering ennobles’ message. But the ability to heal, form new relationships and live on, sets off, without diminishing, the institutionalised injustice that’s scarred these lives. With none of the wrongly-convicted people receiving a cent’s compensation for the years lost through these miscarriages of justice.

Cast (5 March):
Sandra/Sue: Barbara Barnes.
Ensemble 2: Larry Block.
Robert: David Brown Jnr.
Sunny: Stockard Channing.
Ensemble 1: Bruce Kronenberg.
Delbert: Delroy Lindo.
Gary: Matthew Marsh.
David: Curtis McClarin.
Kerry: Aidan Quinn.
Georgia: Heather Simms.

Director: Bob Balaban.

2006-03-06 11:43:52