Righteous indignation over the travesty of the American justice system and staunch advocacy against wrongful incarceration make it natural to want to applaud The Fear of 13. The same goes for Adrien Brody’s intensely wrought performance as Nick Yarris, who spent 22 years on death row in Pennsylvania for a murder and rape he did not commit. 

Lindsey Ferrentino’s one-act play is based on a 2015 documentary of the same name by British filmmaker David Sington, in which Yarris proves a commanding narrator of his own frequently discursive story. But on stage, it’s an awkward mix, with a lot of monotonously earnest direct address and too few dramatized scenes to lend it vitality.

The play was well-received in its London premiere two years ago at the more intimate 250-seat Donmar Warehouse in a different production that also starred Brody. Broadway director David Cromer presumably has had to scale up for a space with a capacity of just over 1,000, which does the lumpy material no favors.

Sadly, nor does the casting of Tessa Thompson as Jacki Miles, the volunteer whose visits evolve into a relationship before she eventually becomes Nick’s wife. Thompson’s performance is fine, but the chemistry between the leads is stiff and unconvincing.

While Jacki serves as a prompt to coax the voluble Nick’s story out of him and follow the maddening vicissitudes of his bungled court case and damaged DNA evidence, she also makes much of the play an exercise in dueling narrators. The cumbersome delivery system gives neither actor much room to explore their characters’ psychological wiring or build dramatic momentum. A story that should be taut instead is talky and static, distinctly lacking in tension.

There’s also a strong sense that Ferrentino — who already had one flop on Broadway this season with another doc adaptation, The Queen of Versailles — has not found the material’s ideal form. Nick is such a verbose raconteur, expounding on his own history and the experiences he has witnessed in prison, that the character seems uniquely suited to a solo show. 

Jacki doesn’t bring enough of an alternative perspective; the cartoonishly thuggish guards are a distraction; and the other prisoners are window dressing. The chief exception is a brief thread in which Nick recalls a tender love story between fellow inmates Wesley (Ephraim Sykes) and Butch (Michael Cavinder), which gives the golden-voiced Sykes a song. But even Arnulfo Maldonado’s austere principal set seems conceived for a one-person play, creating a vast expanse of dead space around the actors, unlike the claustrophobic staging in London.

Yarris’ story is a remarkable one and Brody certainly throws himself into the retelling, from Nick’s teen years, busting cars for drug money, to the traffic stop that went awry, leading to his arrest and conviction on wrongful charges. He goes over the mishandled court case, the destruction of key autopsy material and the initial botched attempt to process DNA samples. Each setback means more years of waiting in limbo, making time, as much as injustice, a central theme.

The drama opens up a little when Nick impulsively seizes an opportunity to escape while being transported to an appeal trial. He ends up on a bicycle in New York City gulping down the taste of short-lived freedom. His tales are so picaresque that Jacki is unsure sometimes of the line between fact and embellishment. But she later learns that his story is mostly true. The major revelation is a traumatic episode during which he was sexually abused as a child.

At one point Nick’s protracted wait becomes so agonizing that he petitions the state to set an execution date. He is subsequently cleared of all charges after conclusive DNA evidence proves his innocence. That should make for a powerful indictment of a legal system in which a man’s life can be put on hold for more than two decades because of the ineptitude of law enforcement and the judiciary. But Ferrentino struggles to synthesize the true story’s larger themes, so even if Brody has some affecting moments in the closing scenes, the play is flat, emotionally ineffectual.

It’s a disappointment that two actors as gifted as Brody and Thompson should make their Broadway debuts in such a bland, poorly conceived vehicle. At close to two hours with no intermission, it numbs both the brain and the butt. 

Venue: James Earl Jones Theatre, New York
Cast: Adrien Brody, Tessa Thompson, Ephraim Sykes, Joel Marsh Garland, Jeb Kreager, Victor Cruz, Michael Cavinder, Eddie Cooper, Eboni Flowers, Jared Wayne Gladly, Joe Joseph, Ben Thompson
Director: David Cromer
Playwright: Lindsey Ferrentino, based on the documentary directed by David Sington
Set designer: Arnulfo Maldonado
Costume designer: Sarah Laux
Lighting designer: Heather Gilbert
Sound designer: Lee Kinney
Presented by Seaview, Wessex Grove, Gavin Kalin Productions, Storykey Entertainment, Pam Hurst-Della Pietria, Steven Della Pietria