No matter how good the writing, shows that have actors reading scripts from lecterns require an extra level of patience from audiences and start to wear out their welcome quickly after the first hour, mainly because of the lack of design elements and movement. Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen's The Exonerated is no different, even though Tom Ontiveros's varied spotlighting is nicely done, and the play offers gripping, real-life, in-their-own-words stories of wrongly-convicted people who spent years on death row until DNA or other new evidence cleared their names.
To its credit, the show isn't solely "feel-bad" theater that points a relentless, accusatory finger at the justice system and society's complacency. Humor is abundant, as is irony, and we're boosted by the foreknowledge that, however horrendous, all the accounts end with the victims being set free. At the end of the performance I attended, many of the real people whose words fill The Exonerated lined up on the stage. Audience members didn't know whether to applaud, shake the group's hands or sneak out guiltily -- so they did all three, which felt pretty right.
