Adrien Brody and Tessa Thompson make affecting Broadway debuts in The Fear of 13, Lindsey Ferrentino’s based-on-a-true-story play about a falsely accused death row inmate and the woman who loves him from the other side of the bullet-proof glass.
Alternately intense and tender, Brody’s performance, despite some choices that can feel a bit like strutting, elevates what in the end is an appalling yet sadly not uncommon wrongful conviction tale in which a man – a low-level Philadelphia car thief named Nick Yarris, at least as troubled as he is a troublemaker – lands a death sentence for a rape and murder we soon learn he didn’t commit (Ferrentino wastes little time on the did-he-or-didn’t-he question – he didn’t, or there wouldn’t be a play).
Based on a 2015 British documentary about Yarris by director David Sington, in which Yarris is the sole presence, relating his story to
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