Theatre in Review: A Time to Kill (Golden Theatre)

	Tijuana Ricks, Patrick Page, Fred Dalton Thompson, John Douglas Thompson. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

I would like to make one thing perfectly clear: I like potboilers. They keep the theatres open, they keep audiences happy, and, after all, we have to do something while waiting for the masterpieces to show up. In fact, if every Broadway season had plenty of amusing sex comedies, tense thrillers, and plushly upholstered star vehicles, we would be living in a far, far better world.

But, musicals aside, Broadway has pretty much gotten out of the business of providing superior entertainment for its own sake; it's especially true this season, as revival-happy producers are busy pairing star names with the likes of Shakespeare, Pinter, Beckett, and Williams. That makes A Time to Kill all the more surprising. When was the last time you saw an honest-to-God courtroom drama -- complete with opening and closing arguments and a big scene in which a key witness has his credibility shredded on the stand?

Of course, A Time to Kill is hardly an original, having been taken from a John Grisham bestseller that has already been the basis for a film. In any case, this is hardly likely to spur a thriller revival; Rupert Holmes' inelegant adaptation tries to shoehorn the novel onto a stage, but the strain shows. Despite some very real pleasures -- including a couple of knockout performances and one or two big scenes, this courtroom melodrama can only aspire to the level of tension found in any episode of The Good Wife.

Interestingly, A Time to Kill opens with the kind of twist usually reserved for the final act. A young black girl in a small Mississippi town is brutally raped by a pair of depraved white men; while she struggles to stay alive in the hospital, they are arraigned in the opening scene. So far, it's an interesting setup, although the details of the rape are graphically detailed, leaving a queasy feeling. Then Grisham explodes the plot by having Carl Lee Hailey, the girl's father, shoot both men in cold blood, inside the courthouse. Now the issue before the court is the murders committed by Carl Lee.

And it's not too long after that that I started to get the feeling that Holmes (and Grisham) were acting opportunistically, exploiting the horrible violation of an innocent girl in order to propel a hoked-up, button-pushing thriller designed to stoke the audience's prejudices even as it pretends to a level of seriousness it can't possibly maintain. Part of the problem is technical; the case eventually engulfs the entire community, but even with 18 or more speaking roles, the story is slighted. Characters are forever telling us about people and developments offstage, but because we never see them, they never take on any reality. Jake Brigance, the lawyer who takes on Carl Lee's case, keeps telling us about the damage it is doing to his family life, but his wife and daughter are never seen. We are constantly told about how both the NAACP and the Ku Klux Klan are attempting to shape the outcome of the case, but, aside from a walk-on by a single Klansman, they exist as amorphous offstage forces. Some of it is sloppiness; Carl Lee also accidentally shoots a policeman, causing him to lose a leg, but somehow the arguments focus solely on the monsters who violated his daughter.

Instead, Holmes spends much of his valuable time on colorful supporting characters who have surprisingly little to do with the story. First up is Lucien Wilbanks, the drunken, disbarred, flagrantly unethical old coot who is Jake's spiritual godfather, who incompetently supplies Jake with a mental-health expert -- they're going for an insanity plea -- seemingly unaware of his sordid past. In the role, Tom Skerritt does his best with a number of wan alcohol jokes, but he never transforms this clichéd, one-dimensional part into anything more than labored comic relief. Then there's Ellen Roark (Ashley Williams), daughter of a prominent lawyer in Boston and herself a law student, who signs on for free as Jake's paralegal. An early nominee for Most Thankless Role of 2013 - 14, seemingly added because somebody decided the show was alarmingly low on women, she has little to do but crack wise (with weak lines), make an embarrassing scene in court in which she tries to convince the judge of her southern girl bona fides, and provide the 30 seconds of sexual tension the script demands.

It doesn't help that most of the action in the courtroom consists of the kind of melodramatics that would probably get everybody thrown out for contempt, with both Jake and his opponent, Rufus R. Buckley, bending, if not breaking, every rule in the book while the crafty judge (Fred Dalton Thompson, looking like he'd like a nap) makes cracker-barrel comments from the bench. And every so often the dialogue swings back around to that poor little girl, and the entire enterprise leaves a bad taste in one's mouth.

Furthermore, Ethan McSweeny's staging is an up-and-down affair, lacking in overall pace or drive. Part of the problem is structural; even with James Noone's turntable set, the script is more screenplay than play, and every few minutes, it's time to go to another location, and after a while, you may feel that you're seeing an evening divided equally into scenes and scene changes. McSweeny has also allowed the sound designer, Lindsay Jones, to underscore some scenes with jarringly false music designed to up the emotional stakes.

The good part of A Time to Kill lies is the opportunities it gives to a zesty cast. Sebastian Arcelus is totally solid as Jake, who is morally bullied by Carl Lee into taking the case, then finds himself having to haggle with his client over the fee. Jake drives the action all night long, and Arcelus' energy never flags, especially in his opening and closing summations. Best known as a musical-theatre performer, he displays some serious character actor skills. Matching him every step of the way -- and often raising him one -- is Patrick Page as the oleaginous district attorney who sees Carl Lee's trial as another step on the road to the governor's office. That fine classical actor John Douglas Thompson proves equally persuasive in a more contemporary role as the accused Carl Lee. Tonya Pinkins makes a powerful impression as Carl's skeptical wife, who wishes he would go with a more experienced legal team. Chiké Johnson offers fine support as the local sheriff, who wants to prevent a racial conflagration. And John Procaccino and Lee Sellars shine as very different expert witnesses, each of whom gets taken apart on the stand.

Noone's set, which wraps the action in a surround of wooden louvers, is certainly atmospheric, although the big scenic effect, a giant burning cross, seems a little overwrought. Jeff Croiter's lighting helps to create the requisite steamy atmosphere. David C. Woolard's costumes effectively locate the story in the American South in the early '80s. Jeff Sugg's projections, of local landscapes, masses of Klansmen, and hundreds of burning candles, among others, are well integrated into the overall design; they make an impression without overwhelming. I regret the final image -- not to be revealed here -- for its manipulative sentimentality.

That's because, without revealing the outcome of the trial, A Time to Kill tries much too hard to send the audience out on a note of uplift. For no matter what the verdict is on Carl Lee, the Klan is outside waiting, thirsty for revenge. A Time to Kill pretends to investigate ugly social realities (like racism) and vexing questions of the meaning of justice, but really, it's an overstuffed version of the kind of judicial battle that television does better, several times a week. The verdict is guilty, of mediocrity. --David Barbour