Spoiler Note: If you'd rather read the new (and better) script (by the original writer, not the adaptor) and be surprised by the changes, buy it here: [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Twelve-Angry-Men-Penguin-Classics/dp/0143104403/sr=1-1/qid=1171132328/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-2316309-5440111?ie=UTF8&s=books"]Amazon[/ame].

Nobody I know who has seen the movie Twelve Angry Men and then been involved with the stage version has liked the only available adaptation of Reginald Rose's original script by Sherman Sergel. It's just really inferior to the original and it puts the intermission in a weird spot.

Shortly before he died in 2002, Rose adapted the play himself for production in London. This is the script which is now on tour with Richard Thomas and George Wendt. I just finished reading it. It's miles ahead of the crappy Sergel script and it's even better than the movie.

1. The language in an all-male room is a little more realistic, though it isn't Mametized.

2. Juror 5 (the Jack Klugman part) and Juror 6 (the house painter) are more fully fleshed out.

3. When I played Juror 2 in 1992, the director threw out the Sergel script and gave us copies of the screenplay from the 1957 film. But this (naturally) didn't have an intermission point marked. I suggested that when #3 attacks # 8, 8's line "You don't really mean you'd kill me, do you?" be the blackout line for act one. The other actors agreed with me. And apparently so did Reginald Rose -- that's where he put his intermission. HA!

4. The two hardest scenes to play have been fixed. When #3 breaks down at the end, it isn't simply a matter of the actor having to go over that mountain by himself. As 3 hovers on the edge of a breakdown, 8 says quietly, "This isn't your son." 4: "Let him live." And that pushes him into "Not Guilty" Land. Similarly, #10's bigoted tirade has been COMPLETELY changed. Only two of the jurors get up to Silently Denounce him, and they don't Symbolically Turn Their Backs, they leave the room in disgust, going into the bathroom. He's not oblivious and trying to convince them, he's belligerent and defiant. The others don't turn their backs, they have to be kept from jumping him. #2 (!) (the bank clerk, my part) tells 10 he's had enough and to knock it off, before #4 tells 10 to sit down and keep his filthy mouth shut. #10 votes Not Guilty, not from a sense of shame and self-awareness, but from the misery of being trapped in a room with eleven people who now hate his very presence. He'll say anything to get out of that room. It's not shamed, silent nod -- it's "Not guilty. You smart bastards go ahead and do whatever you want."

It can be purchased from [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Twelve-Angry-Men-Penguin-Classics/dp/0143104403/sr=1-1/qid=1171132328/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-2316309-5440111?ie=UTF8&s=books"]Amazon (click here)[/ame]. Script by Reginald Rose, Introduction by David Mamet.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ February 12, 2007 12:49 PM: Message edited by: Sgt. Bilko ]</font>