The Fear of 13 review: Adrien Brody’s Death Row play is too afraid to let the dark in

It’s hard to imagine the person who wouldn’t be captivated by gripping prison drama The Fear of 13. But American playwright Lindsey Ferrentino’s clear storytelling slips down effortlessly as she exposes the true story of Nick Yarris, trapped on death row in Pennsylvania for 22 years for a murder he didn’t commit. Hollywood actor Adrien Brody is doing time in the intimate confines of the Donmar as this suffering prisoner, giving a powerful performance that doesn’t let this wronged man feel like a straightforward victim. He’s intriguingly lithe and strange, hard to read – a recovered meth addict who binged his way through 1,000 books in the prison library, assailing his increasingly charmed prison visitor Jackie with literary references and flirty comments rather than protestations of his innocence. Last month, Marcellus Williams was executed on death row on weak evidence, after a trial that excluded Black jurors – the international outcry that followed exposed the racism of a criminal justice system that falls down hardest on the voiceless, discriminated against, and mentally ill. Ferrentino’s narrative effectively shows a wrongfully accused man trapped by a corrupt legal system primed to find the accused guilty, without really gesturing to the wider cruelties at work here – or letting moral ambiguity creep in.