Verdict: intense and engrossing

12 Angry Men, Lowry, to Saturday

REGINALD Rose isn’t a name you hear much, because like the rest of his fellow TV writers, what he wrote was mostly lost in the speed of Fifties weekly TV.

Rose gained his place in more permanent show business history with this work, based on his own stint of jury service in the early Fifties. This intense, short look at the arguments in a jury room on a sultry, oppressively hot afternoon as the jury considers its verdict in a murder case was the result.

The play attracted the attention of then-superstar actor Henry Fonda and was eventually turned into a terrific movie. This theatrical version of the story, written a few years after the film, is no less intense and fascinating.

Christopher Haydon’s production recently ran successfully in the West End partly thanks to its crop of strong actors led by Tom Conti — Juror Number Eight — who manages to get the remaining 11 men, convinced by the prosecution, beieve there are too many holes in the case to send a 16-year-old boy to the electric chair.

Michael Pavelka’s set has no solid walls but all the paraphernalia of a Fifties jury room, including heavy windows, solid furniture and a claustrophobic atmosphere. It lacks the film’s sense of a hot, pre-storm New York summer day (though the storm is depicted), but neatly keeps the group and the furniture moving by putting the heavy table on a slow revolve, in constant motion, so slowly you hardly register it.

Around this table the 12 discuss, argue, threaten, rant and pose questions of each other.

The work isn’t too much longer than a typical two-hour movie, plus interval, which helps it to retain its intensity, though almost by its nature the stage doesn’t suggest the heat and sweatiness of the exasperated men too well.

Rose built a room of types: reasonable Conti, hot-headed Denis Lill, determined Robert Duncan, argumentative Andrew Lancel — plus an assortment of reasonable and unreasonable men young and old.

The result is an engrossing, constantly-changing landscape of argument and persuasion, admirably maintained throughout by the smart, often witty script.