A well-crafted courtroom melodrama can be great fun for audiences, and a money-maker for backers.
“A Few Good Men” launched the career of Aaron Sorkin back in 1992. The Roundabout Theatre Company made a tidy packet on Scott Ellis’ cracker-jack production of “Twelve Angry Men” in 2004. And fans of old-fashioned, juicy, scene-stealing acting flocked to see Christopher Plummer and Brian Dennehy go at each other in that granddaddy of courtroom melodramas, “Inherit the Wind.”
And now, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I present what could be the next Broadway courtroom thriller — John Grisham’s “A Time To Kill.”
The play, which was adapted from the novel by Rupert Holmes, opened earlier this year at the Arena Stage in Washington DC.
The Washington Post’s Peter Marks gave it a mixed review, calling it “mashed-potatoes theater, easy to digest and decently filling, but nothing you have not swallowed 1,000 times before.” Marks said Broadway may be a stretch — unless some stars are attached.
Well, this Friday there will be a reading of the play in New York, with Beau Bridges as Lucien Wilbanks, a disbarred civil-rights lawyer who gets involved in a racially incendiary murder case. Bridges’ daughter Emily will also take part in the reading, as will Shuler Hensley, who was about the only redeeming thing in “Young Frankenstein.”
I’m not sure Bridges counts as a star anymore. “The Fabulous Baker Boys” came out in 1989, after all. Today Bridges is more of a dependable character actor. But should the producers decide to go forward with a Broadway production after Friday’s reading, I hear they’ll approach Justin Timberlake for the key role as Wilbanks’ young legal protegé.
Timberlake, a memorably ambitious Sean Parker in “The Social Network,” has been looking for a Broadway play for a couple of years. “A Time To Kill” might fit the bill. It ain’t “Hamlet,” but it’s got plenty of dramatic scenes in which the actor can throw off some fireworks — and earn some decent notices.
My one hesitation about this production is the director, Ethan McSweeny. Once touted as a real comer, he made a hash in 2000 of Gore Vidal’s terrific political melodrama, “The Best Man.”
His high-powered cast — Charles Durning, Elizabeth Ashley, Chris Noth, Michael Learned and Spalding Gray — came to despise him, especially after he made Learned — Ma Walton! — cry at a rehearsal. Ashley, who eats directors for breakfast and spits them out at lunch, looked at him and said: “Little boy, why don’t you come on over here and shine my shoes?”
McSweeny hasn’t worked on Broadway since.
“Does Justin Timberlake or Beau Bridges really want to make their Broadway debuts with someone like Ethan in charge?” says a person who worked on “The Best Man.”
“Wouldn’t you rather have Joe Mantello?”
Yes. Unless you’re Julia Roberts, who didn’t do so well by Joe in the dreary “Three Days of Rain.”
In McSweeny’s favor is the Washington Post review, which called the production “slickly efficient.”
Everybody deserves a second chance. But if McSweeny screws this one up, Ashley and I are going to bean him with a can of Kiwi shoe polish on opening night.
The view from “The Mountaintop” is a little cloudy.
I hear Samuel L. Jackson, who’s making his Broadway debut, is giving a noticeably tentative performance in previews. Word around town is that he’s pulling a Matthew Broderick — which is to say “Line!” But production sources insist he’s got his lines down. It’s just that he’s very, very nervous.
Not so Angela Bassett, who’s having a fine old time acting him right off the stage.
“The Mountaintop” is about Martin Luther King Jr. and an encounter he has with a chambermaid on the eve of his assassination. The director is Kenny Leon, who staged the Tony-winning revival of “Fences” last year.
If anybody can bring Jackson up to snuff, it’s Leon.