Edinburgh Fringe theatre review

Casting a bunch of comedians to play the jurors in a new  production of Twelve Angry Men was the talk of the Fringe in 2003. But no one at the time was surely saying: ‘This is all very well and good, but what it really needs is for one of the finest screenplays in Hollywood history to be rewritten.’

Yet here we are with this half-spoof, half-homage – and sad to say that comic Owen O’Neill's new take on the classic drama is an absolute dog’s dinner of a script.

The twist this time is that everyone believes the suspect to be innocent, except for the pint-sized No 8 –the ‘half-a-man’ played by Ian Coppinger – who believes him guilty and deserving of the electric chair. 

There's a major dramatic issue with this, because to convince fellow jurors to deliver an innocent verdict, you only need add an element of doubt into their mind. To make them think someone is guilty and shoud be executed, you have to introduce certainty. 

Yet the script never does such a thing. People change their vote on a whim - which is kind of the point - but such random changes of heart make it confusingly difficult to keep track of who’s currently in which corner – since no one seems won over by any memorable, passionate argument beyond a need to get this deliberation over and done with.  

Is this overthinking a play that’s billed as a comedy, with the murder case revolving around the victim choking on an exotic sausage, such a blatantly silly crime? Not really, especially since the comic elements are largely incongruous in a play that still revolves around the tension of the life-or-death deliberations in a sweltering New York courthouse, but struggles to square it with gags.

Cheap jokes are inserted into supposedly dramatic monologues, meaning they are no longer dramatic. Nor, often, funny. For example, when one character talks from the heart about how gambling drove her mother to the brink of suicide, he throws in the line: ‘She threw herself from the  window, but we live on the ground floor so she was fine’ – a decent joke, but it doesn't fit the tone at all.

Elsewhere, as foreman, Stephen K Amos has to deliver the line: ‘What sausage sorcery is this?’ with the authority of someone who thinks that’s a perfectly normal thing to say. In any case, his patrician English persona is at odds with the 1950s New York setting, even if that incongruity is addressed.

Then we get Joe Pasquale tap-dancing on the table. Because, why not?  You’ve got Joe Pasquale, you want to use him. There are a few knowing jokes about the mores of the play’s era – the opening exchange asks where all the women are, for example – but most punchlines are bolted on inelegantly. 

Aside from the insurmountable problems of a story it’s difficult to invest in, the performances are strong and go beyond the simple pleasures of seeing comedians outside their comfort zone. 

Mark Maier steals his scenes as a terminally stupid man; Spencer Jones plays an irritatingly smug Harvard-educated smartass; Terry Alderton is a gruff, taciturn, cigar-chomping gangster-adjacent alpha; Tom Stade and Phil Nichol are irascible working men, always spoiling for a fight; while Glenn Wool gets to unleash a slightly bonkers, but passionate speech that belate;dy injects some energy towards the end. JJ Whitehead, David Calvitto and O’Neill himself – as a cowboy turned artisanal soft furnishings craftsman – round off the cast.

On a technical note, playing a soundscape of city noise outside the window is a little distracting and takes away from the intensity and intimacy of the exchanges, although that is the least of the issues facing a play that seems so uncertain of what it wants to be and how it should achieve that. Wasting so many comedians’ talents on this ill-conceived script– that’s the real crime.

Review date: 8 Aug 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Pleasance @ EICC