REVIEW: The Verdict at the Mayflower Theatre

All rise in court, as for tonight your honour, the Mayflower theatre was transformed into Boston 1980. This play is a stage adaptation of a book and film both with the same name, all about an alcoholic Boston lawyer who is taking his last shot towards redemption in a medical negligence case against a very powerful attorney. Sounds like a great idea for a film and book right. Lots of detail and jumping from place to place with different story lines coming together to help the pace of the film progress. But would the same idea with long speeches packed full of detail work on stage? The answer? I think it does yes, and I think they’ve done it very well. 

One thing that is always a worry about adaptations from screen, or book to stage, is the question, will people actually understand what is going on? Especially if they have no prior information about the storyline? And again I think the answer to that question is yes. Barry Reed’s book and David Mamet’s screenplay aren’t exactly the fastest paced stories to follow (especially not in the beginning), and one thing a play ideally needs to be is fast paced to keep that audience engagement. Margaret May Hobbs, who adapted the story for the stage, has done an incredible job at doing just this! Something that I was really impressed by was the overall energy from the cast, especially when the subjects they are talking about aren’t exactly the most exciting. The cast have clearly worked very hard with the director, Michael Lunney (who is also part of the cast), to each understand their characters fully and bounce off of each other to keep that tempo up. 

It goes without saying the the role of the boozy Boston lawyer Frank Galvin, played by the well renowned Jason Merrells, was just perfection. Merrells’ performance hit all the right beats. He made us empathise with him, empathise for him and empathise for ‘his client’ all within the space of the same dialogue. From curtain up, we were with him the whole time taking in each and every word to fully help us understand not only the story, but his character. Fantastic! Nigel Barber who played the role of J. Edgar Concannon, the defence attorney to Galvin’s plaintiff, gave another performance to be noted. His character was almost the ‘bad-guy’ of the play, which when acting is a very fine line between over-acting and becoming the pantomime villain, or under acting and completely throwing the power dynamic of the on stage battle. Barber walked that fine line perfectly and produced another fantastic note-worthy performance. Congratulations! I’d also like to give a special shoutout to Vincent Pirillo playing the role of Moe Katz, Galvin’s law partner; he added a different dimension to the cast almost being the voice of reason that the audience could resonate through. As previously mentioned, everybody clearly knew their roles like the back of their hands and their on stage connections were fantastic (especially the Galvin and Donna Saint Laurent (Reanne Farley) love interest). Brilliant work all round from each and every member of the cast!

The sound and lighting of the play were very simple and that’s all it had to be. Nothing fancy needed to be done, the set just needed to be lit and then every now and then a sound effect needed to be played. That’s literally it. As for the set, again it was very simple but I think that’s all it really needed to be. We saw multiple different places that we became familiar with, in Act 1 it was Galvin’s office and Meehan’s Bar which were fixed and didn’t move throughout the entirety of the act (just lit up when in use). In Act 2 it was just a fixed court room which was set up with three clear walls and the audience being the 4th (more on this a little bit later). There were drop down pieces of set throughout both acts which acted as another place and they too were fine I just wish that instead of being fixed in place and sitting in darkness when not in use, set pieces could roll on and off. I think it would have been that little bit clearer to help keep the attention of the audience for longer. That being said, the pièce de résistance is the courtroom (being a courtroom drama) and my hat goes off to all of the set and scenic art designers. They really brought Boston to Southampton.

For the pacing of the play, Act 1 did seem a little bit slow and actually felt a lot longer than it was. Act 1 was all about setting the scene and story for what was to come. So you can understand why it felt that little bit longer. Having said this, they did manage to cram a lot of information in without making us feel lost from what was going on. Job well done I’d say. I remember turning around in the interval and saying, “That actually felt like I was watching a movie, not a theatre production”. Something I think I have never said in the theatre before! Both Acts began when the houselights were still up and some silent acting was going on on-stage. It was almost as if the audience were a fly and the wall of these normal people’s lives and it could’ve been very effective. Unfortunately I just don’t think many of the audience quite got it. Everybody was just sort of looking around at each other asking “Has it started?”. Act 2 was the big crescendo of what Act 1 was leading to. The trial. My oh my was it good. The acting, mixed with the brilliant writing left the audience audibly gasping. You couldn’t get much more up tempo than this. Without revealing any spoilers, there were so many twists and turns that were so unexpected, throwing the classic ‘court-drama dramatic-irony’ out of the window. The thing I liked most about Act 2 was the indirect 4th wall break. Throughout the whole Act, the audience played the role of the jury. Yes the actors were talking directly out to us as If we were the jury, but it never became cheesy as they were never expecting an answer – much like a real jury in court. We were all of a sudden a part of this story we had become so invested in. Superb! 

The stage adaptation of ‘The Verdict’ does incredibly well at getting a complex story across, making the audience feel invested and even feel apart of the story that they’d just experienced. You end up going through a full range of emotions and the whole cast and company have done a fantastic job in creating this captivating story live. ‘The Verdict’ has had a very successful run on tour and you can definitely see why! A massive congratulations to everybody involved – court is adjourned.