Some plays are entertaining. Others are informative. But truly meaningful theatre, theatre that is worthy of calling itself "art" must do more than this: it must make you think. The Exonerated thinks the death penalty is wrong. The Exonerated does not, however, make you think. It talks at you, patronizes you, yells and preaches to you. It is a work that seems better suited to the pulpit than the stage.
This is a story about six people being dehumanized on death row, but The Exonerated is without humanity. This morally noble play is incapable of saying or portraying anything truly meaningful about the horrors these characters endured; it is artless. In fact, this play would perhaps be better described as an elaborate staged reading, since there is no set or blocking and all the actors have a script at their disposal.
The dialogue, which was mostly cullled from interviews of those who have been exonerated and court documents, needs a sensitive editor and a more discerning eye for dialogue than writers Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen posses. Most of the dialogue has a clunky obviousness, like "The criminal justice system is totally fucked up!"
These characters may be entitled to posses such righteous anger, but projecting this anger onto the audience doesn't draw you them, it puts them off. Because the characters are never developed beyond vague sketches, we cannot relate to them as real people. This 90-minute show gives each character about 15 minutes to tell their story, and 15 minutes is not enough time to make these men and women real.
'The Exonerated' 
at Gammage Auditorium, Gammage Parkway and Mill Ave., Tempe. Playing Jan. 27 to Feb. 1., 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. 7 p.m Sunday. $17.50 to $47.50. Half-price tickets available on the day of the show with ASU ID. 480.965.3434.
The authors have also forgotten the first rule of good writing: show, don't tell. This play is all telling - an extended monologue riff. Blank and Jensen say that this play represents the stories of the 109 exonerees who have left death row, and perhaps that is the problem.
None of the characters are allowed any meaningful, sustained interaction. They are quite literally talking heads; 109 lives condensed down to a handful of stereotypes, whether it is the dippy hippie played by Mia Farrow or the angry activist portrayed by William Jay Marshall.
The most glaring example of this stereotyping was the decision to cast Dennis Burkley in the role of "Mean County District Attorney/ Mean Town Sheriff." Burkley plays this role just as you would expect: all corpulent and cocksure, with a heavy dose of Southern drawl. Just once I'd like to see the bad attorney guy played by a skinny guy from Wisconsin.
One actor manages to rise above the mediocre script and pomp the other actors court. As Gary Gauger, a man wrongly accused of killing his own parents and sentenced to death, Steve Brady shines.
Rather than playing the monologues with the sort of "Look ma, I'm auditioning for Julliard" heavy-handedness that plagues the other performers, Brady quietly and carefully gives this shallow script true depth and beauty. He is the only character who talks to the audience without the "I'm going to tell you a story" sense of ceremony, and it is this lack of ceremony or pretension that makes him successful in drawing the viewer in and imbuing his story with real feeling.
There seems to be a strong demand for "good for you theatre" - plays that educate the audience about injustice in an attempt to convert us to the cause presented. But these plays so often forget that good moral intentions do not automatically make for good theatre.
We are too busy feeling smug and morally self-righteous to notice that the wool has been pulled over our eyes. We have lost the true magic of theatre if a play's only project is to inform and stroke our moral egos.
I may agree with the creators that the death penalty is a bad thing, and what these men and women endured is horrifying, but these facts alone do not excuse the presentational acting, the poor character development and the patronizing tone of The Exonerated.
Reach the reporter at kathleen.heil@asu.edu.
