The drama of the death penalty

OneWorld UK

By Lorna Lythgoe

For a play to change a politicians views about the death penalty, it must make one hell of a statement. The Exonerated is said to have done this to a leading Chicago congressman, despite the lack of on-stage action - the cast sit perched on high stools throughout the performance.

Their words, however, are dramatic and devastating.

For the six monologues are drawn from interviews, letters and transcripts of six Americans who were falsely convicted of murder and sentenced to death. They were ultimately found innocent and freed. Their time on death row ranged from two years to 22.

Sometimes one of the real victims, Sunny Jacobs, performs her own words: catch her at Londons Riverside Theatre on April 11-15. Jacobs, who had a nine-year-old son and a 10-month-old daughter at the time she was sentenced to death, was incarcerated for 17 years before being exonerated. (More than 115 prisoners have been released from death rows in the US due to evidence of their wrongful convictions: how many of the 3,400 people currently under the death sentence are innocent is unknown.)

Other members of the cast also change: Danny Glover (Lethal Weapon, Silverado, Hill Street Blues) is on stage for the 11-15 April performances at the Riverside, and Vanessa Redgrave is booked for 4 May.

The Exonerated ran for a year-and-a-half in New York and then toured the US for nine months. Its success has launched it beyond US shores and it continues to provoke and inspire as it tours around the world.

Members of the audiences already against the death penalty are moved by the piece. Others are disturbed. Death penalty advocates are brought face-to-face with the reality that false convictions can and do arise from judicial mistakes and corruption.

Despite the harrowing topic, The Exonerated is a beacon of light. Each tale reveals how lives may be knocked off course, but that if you are lucky - a positive future is still possible. To hear voices rising up against the death penalty, and to know that the suffering of at least a few is not forgotten, fills the theatre with the scent of the possibility of change. The audience inhales deeply.

Lorna Lythgoe is a freelance writer and film maker and ex-talk radio presenter who has moved into the development sector in order to contribute to a fairer and more sustainable world.

* The Exonerated
* World Coalition Against the Death Penalty