This fall, John Grisham's debut novel A TIME TO KILL, one of the most celebrated courtroom dramas of the last several decades, becomes the first in his iconic collection of legal dramas to be adapted for the Broadway stage.
A TIME TO KILL is the incendiary story of a Southern community torn in half by an unspeakable crime. As the shocking news hits the public, small town America becomes the center of a media storm, where innocence is the victim, race is on trial and lives hang in the balance.
Part courtroom drama, part suspense thriller, pure theatrical dynamite, A TIME TO KILL begins performances September 28 at the Golden Theatre.
'It was my first book and the first that I have allowed to be adapted for the theatre. Rupert Holmes did an excellent job of translating it from the page to the stage, and I am happy that not only my loyal readers, but a whole new audience, will be able to experience this story in live theatre.'
- John Grisham
the producers of 'A Time to Kill' have lavished Holmes' play with an old-fashioned cast of players, numbering no fewer than 17 actors. Too bad that huge cast doesn't have a vintage story to tell, because when you strip Grisham's panoramic tale of racism and injustice in a small Mississippi city down to a courtroom drama, there really isn't much of a trial at the heart of it...Under Ethan McSweeny's direction at the Golden Theater, only John Douglas Thompson, Tonya Pinkins as his supportive wife and Patrick Page as the smarmy prosecutor (the Spacey role) are able to tweak this character dross into star turns. In his Broadway debut, Tom Skerritt keeps entering and exiting like a lost ghost in white hair and designer David C. Wollards's equally bleached-out linens.
Rupert Holmes' stage adaptation of John Grisham's first novel, 'A Time to Kill,' comes at a sweet moment for the author, whose belated sequel to that 1989 book, 'Sycamore Row,' is being published this month. But a 25-year time lapse that works on the page doesn't necessarily play on the stage, and there's a distinctly dated feeling to the material - not the topic of Southern racism, but the youthful idealism of its hero. And despite a sturdy ensemble production helmed by Ethan McSweeny, this courtroom drama feels as if it were made for an earlier, less cynical era.
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