Theatre Review: 12 Angry Men, Nine Years Theatre

The 2013 Huayi Festival got off to a good start with local company Nine Years Theatre's Twelve Angry Men.  The play, written by Reginald Rose, was staged in Mandarin.

This is a text-based play and requires good actors for this production.  For Chinese theatre, this is a challenge but director Nelson Chia managed to find 12 capable actors to be the angry men. Some actors were more active in the English theatre scene.

Of the cast, Jeffrey Low was convincing as Juror 8, the architect who questioned the initial judgement.  Rei Poh, Tay Kong Hui and Robin Goh played their roles well as jurors who insisted that the murder suspect was guilty.  It is a pity that Johnny Ng, a veteran of Chinese theatre, did not have a meatier part this time.  He could have played juror 4.   



Wong Chee Wai did a realistic meeting room set, and several audience were impressed by the raining sequence.

This is a good ensemble cast and the pacing of the production was on the spot.  Director Nelson Chia must be given credit for pulling this together.

This is Nine Years Theatre's first production, although the core people were involved in last year's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf 谁怕吴尔芙？(Huayi Festival 2012).  It is great that a Chinese theatre company is focusing on text-based theatre, which not many are doing now.  Looking forward to their next production.