The Exonerated Fails to Generate Momentum or Deep Feeling

Ethically speaking, there is little to object to about The Exonerated, a "docudrama" that heaves the full weight of fact against the inhumane institution of the death penalty. Written by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen and culled from all manner of public documents, the play's oversize heart is planted securely in its chest, thumping with all the moral outrage and encyclopedic indignity of The Nation's letters-to-the-editor page. And this is why the play falls short as a piece of theater.

Directed by ReAct's founding artistic director, David Hsieh, the play jumps among six stories of justice severely and dangerously aborted. Each tale, though unique in its horrifying details, follows a sort of Dantean arc from arrest to death row to exoneration. These pieces are stitched together by the narration of death-row inmate Delbert Tibbs (well played by Curt Bolar), whose running commentary provides a more philosophical slant on each character's raw testimony. Yet even this device, a nugget of artifice in an onslaught of unreconstructed woe, can't alleviate the sense that this is more a legal proceeding than a production. "This is a weird country," Tibbs says with bemusement, "it really is." OK. Now tell us something we don't know. The problem here is not the reality of the situation but the representation of that reality. Blank and Jensen—and, in turn, Hsieh—do nothing interesting or new with these stories of dead men walking. This is a shame, because the play obviously displays an impressive amount of research. Any one of the inmates' stories, told with passion and flair, would have made a better play, as well as a more effective argument against the barbaric practice of state execution.

Ultimately, and ironically, The Exonerated undermines its own intent; in its desire to convince, it loses all dramatic subtlety, opting to erect straw men and stereotypes as the vanguard of capital punishment. The program lists such characters as "Various White Cops" and "Southern White Guys." Indeed, there are some monstrously ignorant and hateful people in this country—more and more all the time, it seems—but they do have names. Such caricature-making may have rhetorical currency, but it has no place in theater.