The Exonerated (review)

For their new documentary play, The Exonerated, writers Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen interviewed sixty people who had spent anywhere from two to twenty-two years on death row. Incorporating six of those interviews with court testimony, police interrogation, and personal correspondence, Blank and Jensen have crafted a powerful indictment against the criminal justice system and capital punishment.

The narrative spans the arrest, imprisonment and eventual exoneration and release of five men and one woman—three of whom are African American and three Caucasian. The cases include coercion of suspects to make misleading statements, representation by attorneys who were not disinterested parties, and inconclusive fingerprint evidence. Prison life is presented as treacherous: when one prisoner was assaulted by his fellow inmates, they carved the words 'good pussy' on his buttocks. Prison held other horrors: exercise had to be taken in a yard where the electric chair was in full sight. After release, some had trouble adjusting: one needed to lock himself in to feel safe, another resorted to drugs to cope with the loss of self. But others were able to form new alliances as well as draw on inner resources to appreciate the riches of life on the outside.

The Exonerated is presented as a staged reading. The primary players are seated in a row on stools behind music stands that hold their scripts. Two ensemble actors who play, among other characters, police interrogators and courtroom lawyers, sit on raised platforms on either side of the group of ex-prisoners and their mates. Although the production apparatus was, of necessity, minimal, director Bob Balaban used light and sound to good effect: creating scenes via spotlights; using sounds of shots ringing out, helicopters circling their prey, and cell doors clanging shut to drive home the fear and terror that these people had lived through. A number of well-known actors, such as Richard Dreyfuss and Jill Clayburgh, appeared in the opening weeks of the play. Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Harry Belafonte, and Gabriel Byrne are reported as being part of a roster of celebrities who will join the cast. By the second week of the production, there were already new luminaries in the lineup.

The Exonerated explains how individuals came to be falsely accused of a capital crime and describes how they coped with years of imprisonment. A would-be poet/philosopher, embodied with great dignity by the sonorous-voiced Charles Brown, says that although "it ain't easy to be a poet here. . . I sing." In a particularly moving passage, we hear the correspondence between Sunny (in an excellent performance by Jill Clayburgh) and her common-law husband Jessie Tafero, both of whom were wrongfully convicted for murdering two law officers. Their letters to each other, Sunny says, had to be delivered unsealed so that prison authorities could make sure they were not plotting an escape. Using Japanese words, the two develop a code in which they can express their more intimate thoughts. An ensemble actor reads Jessie's letter aloud, and we see Sunny's delighted reactions. She takes what little pleasure she can in jail, because, she says, she's not a lump of flesh you can put in a cage. Sunny eventually shares the horrific details of Jessie's botched electrocution in 1990. David Brown, Jr. and April Yvette Thompson, playing man and wife, provide some comic relief with their repartee. The husband admits that now that he is out of prison, he is restless and reluctant to go home at night, much to the dismay of his mate.

Both the program and an announcement at the top of the show remind the audience that the words of The Exonerated are from real people. Having celebrities portray characters in the play means their past performances and public personas "haunt" the stage, to use Marvin Carlson's term. This creates a distance between performer and character, so that the audience is always aware...