The Exonerated is a powerful play about death row and is being performed at Chapel off Chapel in The Loft.  Directed by Andrei Schiller Chan, this play takes real life stories of people who have been sentenced to death only to be later exonerated of the crime – their life having been stolen from them even though they are still living.

This play is so powerful that it was turned into a TV movie in 2005 with an all star cast including Brian Dennehy, Danny Glover, Aidan Quinn, and Susan Sarandon.  The original stage play was written in 200 after Blank and Jensen attended a conference about the death penalty and listened to stories about wrongful convictions and confessions gained via torture, threats and deception. For their efforts, Jensen and Blank received the Champion of Justice Award from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

The play follows the stories of six real life cases of people who were exonerated of the crimes for which they were imprisoned and includes personal recollections, court manuscripts and media excerpts.  The stories are told from the victims perspectives, as they recall the horror of the arrests, the trials and the endless years of imprisonment – all the while knowing they are innocent and yet understanding that the world does not want to hear it.

For some, the time in prison was unbearable – being stuck in a cell only the width of their arms, fighting with rats for their food, being raped and physically scarred for life (beyond the ability of plastic surgery to correct the graffiti).  These stories are painful, but the honesty, matter of factness, and humour with which they are presented makes it bearable – and, in fact, made me unable to turn away for a single moment.

Chan knows his subject and these people, and it shows in the delicacy, grace and impact of how he has directed this performance.  Chan has been involved with Rubin Carter’s organisation Innocence International for years.  His company, Sol III Company created The Hurricane Hall to raise awareness and funds for prisoner rehabilitation and wrongful convictions.  The company is also an affiliate of Liberation Prison Yoga New York.

Chan’s direction is masterful, and the ensemble live up to the complexity of the stories they are telling.  Jani, Loko, Rego, and Brumen in particular are luminous, with subtelties and balance in their performances that are rarely seen.

With ten actors on a small stage, it would be easy for this show to become confusing and meandering, but between Chan’s direction and Read’s clever set, I never spent a single moment not knowing who was speaking, or what was being said, nor the status and relationships which were being presented.  This is really important because most of the actors played multiple characters.

MacFarlane’s lighting was incredibly well done – again fighting a tiny space, yet able to create a plethora of ‘zones’, textures, and impacts.  MacFarlane and Read shared the load well in terms of how to make the space read for each scene.  The benefit of this is that it allowed the pace of the work to be crafted by the director rather than it being dictated by the architecture or technology.

I rarely say this, but for me this show was almost perfect, and the one complaint I have is just about it’s questionable relevance in Australia – or at least in Victoria.  The play ends with a bit of moralising about why the death penalty should not exist, but we already know that, and we don’t have it any more which makes this part of the play redundant for us.

Having said that, the stories are still important to hear so that we continue to remember why we no longer have that barbaric practice in our society.  The Exonerated really is one of the best plays you will see this year.

5 Stars

Source: Planet Arts Melbourne