For the Rapids City Times

WISCONSIN RAPIDS –The Wisconsin Rapids Community Theatre opens their third production of the season with the legal drama: Twelve Angry Jurors by Sherman Sergel, directed by John Young.

The play is based on the 1957 Emmy award-winning movie starring Henry Fonda – Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose. Twelve Angry Jurors has been slightly updated to include a mixed cast of men and women. The play is set in a jury room as the 12 jurors set out to deliberate the guilt of a 19-year-old man charged with stabbing his father to death. It seems like an open and shut case but when the verdict must be unanimous and a young man’s life is on the line, not everyone is so willing to accept the evidence at face value.

Drama quickly ensues and tempers flare as the hot and tired jurors examine the evidence, re-enact the crime, and begin to re-evaluate their own ideals. The drama and suspense will have audiences on the edge of their seats wondering if a unanimous verdict can ever be reached and if so, what it will be.

A character-focused show, director John Young has deliberately opted for few set pieces and no flashy lighting or sound effects leaving the audience free to focus on the individual characters that make up the jury. The jury, as it should be, is a representation of the diversity of the American population: a working mother, a well-to-do businessman, an immigrant, someone from the “wrong side of the tracks”, and other. But, as the audience listens to the jurors and discovers their personalities, they also discover some of their personal biases.

Above all, this production asks the audience to question how much our circumstances, upbringing, and environment shape the way we think and act. Can we truly leave our personal experiences out of the equation when deciding a man’s fate?

The show opens Feb. 15, with performances on Feb. 15, 16, 21, 22, & 23 at 7:30 p.m. and an additional performance on Feb. 24 at 2 p.m., in the Gilbert & Jaylee Mead Auditorium at Wisconsin Rapids Community Theater located in the Centralia Center.

Tickets can be purchased that the WRCT box office, online at www.wrctheatre.org, or by calling 715-421-0435. The WRCT box office is open Tuesdays – Fridays, 11 a.m. – 3 p.m., and one hour prior to curtain on the day of the show.